That was theoretical, you bought what car came available first. If you wanted a Lada, but a ZAZ was only a two year waiting list instead of four, that’s what you bought.

The government owned the tobacco companies, would they really want to discourage sales of their own product?

I can honestly say that if this was for sale closer to me, I’d take it home this weekend.

Is it just me, or did almost every one of her recipes start with melting like 4 sticks of butter? And she drank wine like a fish drinks water, lived to 91 and was working almost to the end.

My understanding was that Moskvitch was what you got if you wanted better than a ZAZ, but didn’t want to stay on the wait list for a Lada.

That’s probably more sloppiness on the part of the person creating the ad posting. There’s sites that don’t even have transmission type as a mandatory field, so if you filter by manual, some manual cars will get dropped from the results just because that dropdown wasn't clicked. 

They wouldn’t have all spoke Russian with the same accent, either, given that the USSR was such a massive, multi ethnic country. Beria and Stalin were Georgian, Mikoyan was Armenian, Kaganovich, Voroshilov, and Moskalenko were all from Ukraine, and even among the Russians you’d have had differences, based on class,…

The British would probably be better acquainted with that process than most other countries. 

I believe "Soviet Mercedes" was actually a common nickname for Volgas back in the day. 

Personally, I like that they’re not faking Russian accents, since it usually comes across as cartoonist. I suppose Russian actors would have been a good idea, but, then you have to find enough that can speak English well enough to really pull off all the parts.

They specifically chose a neighborhood in Vilnius that still has a high concentration of Soviet prefab concrete apartment blocks from the 1970s, which are basically identical to the ones in Pripyat. I read that the director wasn’t happy about the modern windows and patio enclosures added over the years, or aging/darken…

You need to if you want the car to actually look attractive, which is important for something that’s supposed to be an aspirational choice beyond pure utility. 

It sounds to me like she makes space available for food trucks (or something like a food truck), since, obviously, being able to offer food makes people a lot more willing to come to her bar and spend time there. Likely, she either doesn’t have a kitchen or doesn’t have a license to operate as a restaurant herself.

That’s pretty different though, you’re sitting at the bar eating food as a paying customer, not just nursing a glass of free tap water for an hour. 

It was pretty terrible, but it was early enough in the Zombie Simpsons era that a few decent lines still made it through.

I get it if we’re talking about multi-use bathrooms that can accommodate multiple people at a time, but a single person bathroom with a locking door? What does it matter? So there can be a line of women around the corner waiting their turn, while the other one sits totally empty (and vice versa)? Totally inefficient. 

The trouble is a lot of the cloth put in cars nowadays is also very cheap feeling and looking, coarse and scratchy instead of soft and luxuriant. I believe its intentional, to force people to pay for the leather upgrade. 

RWD allows it to have attractive proportions, instead of looking like a dustbuster minivan with a sedan trunk granted on the back, like most FWD cars.

For a car in this size class, arguing for more interior room is a bit like Russia and the United States building more nuclear warheads. There’s already more than enough to do the job. 

Idiots who currently have money, but probably won’t for all that much longer if they keep spending it on idiotic things like a $250,000 marketing piece for a car company?