Delightful old Soviet automobile ads are delightful

My, but aren't these old Soviet car ads just the comrade's potato! A gallery of scans awaits you here.
(via Submitterator, thanks, metkere)

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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Anonymous

PUT IT IN “H”!!!
Robert

“The comrade’s potato” made me spray my coffee this morning. Thanks, Xeni!
Anonymous

Reminds me of that old soviet joke which I refound on the web:

In Soviet Russia there was a farmer who managed to save enough money to purchase a car of his own. He made the journey to the local distributor of automobiles and waited his turn in queue.

When he reached the counter the official told him, “Ok, you can come back to pick up your new car,” the official ran his finger down a list, “you can pick up your car two years from tomorrow.”

The farmer asked, “Morning or afternoon?” The official replied, “What do you care, it’s two years from now?”

The farmer replied, “Well the plumber is coming in the afternoon.”
Anonymous

Great photos, I love period advertisements, especially those that advertise strange products from foreign lands.

That said, I do believe the “adjective noun is adjective” meme has officially been played out. You’re going to have to wait two years for it to become retro-hip again.
- oasisob1
  
  You mean to say that ‘played out meme is played out’?
  
  I would love some hi-res scans for desktop pictures. Those would be horrorshow!
Stefan Jones

Those women were adorable twin toddlers when their parents put their names on the list to order that car.
scifijazznik

The Top Gear primer on Soviet automobiles: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLW4tVGgz9o
lipilee

oh, the sound of these “zaporozsec” cars (as we called them), nothing like it! oh wait, there is: petrol-powered lawnmowers.

you had to wait several months to get one of these from the car dealership, that’s consumer society socialist style :)
- Jonathan Badger
  
  I don’t know how it was in the USSR itself, but if the wait for Trabants in East Germany was any indication, the wait time for cars was measured in years, not months (the joke about the girls being toddlers that Stefan made was only a *slight* exaggeration)
  - Trent Hawkins
    
    Probably has more to do with the fact that no one was in a rush to supply a bunch of former Nazis with the latest automobiles at the time.
Jack

In America you drive car looking out front window with both hands on wheel.
In Russia we drive car looking out of back window with no hands on wheel!

WHAT A COUNTRY!!!
- Anonymous
  
  The ZAZ-968 Zaporozhets has an air-cooled V4 mounted in the rear. I think this shot is meant to be a visual gag on this fact?
  - Jack
    
    The ZAZ-968 Zaporozhets has an air-cooled V4 mounted in the rear.
    
    Iâ€™d like to mount them in the rear! *rimshot* (literally)
    
    PS: What I initially wrote was a joke!
Anonymous

On the vintage ads note, I released a little app interface to vintage ad browser today (over 100,000 old ad pics):
http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/app/
Anonymous

no Ladas?

FAIL!
Anonymous

Did you ever hear the song “Zazz Turned Blue?”
- Ugly Canuck
  
  If you haven’t , you can hear it here:
  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6Xt-u6ptWA
  
  ..what were we supposed to do?
Anonymous

wow…the girl in the aeroflot ad is quite the looker. so we get that, and a ride on the biggest airframe in the world? impressed!
Joe The Wizard

Put it in H!
ackpht

I’d love to fly in a Tu-114, too- but I’d bring earplugs. Supersonic propeller tips make lots of noise!

The plane in the ad seems to be a Tu-124, though.
Anonymous

The one before last ad is indeed for a Russian car (Moskvitch 2140) but in Greek language. Title reads “Now the new Moskvitch 2140 leaves many european cars behind”
Anonymous

nice picture
gwailo_joe

Sure: so small. So weak. So (in retrospect) doomed to failure. But back in those days we made the biggest petrol-guzzlingest automobiles that have ever existed to prove our superiority: look around. . .we are (regressing?); certainly getting smaller as an automotive culture

Don’t laugh too loud: 50 years from now; your best vehicle ever will be comedic fodder for the masses.

That being said; if you could roll today on first (or any) world streets in a pristine version of any one of these cars. . .you would be respected and admired by most if not all. Just because.

It’s like the snub nosed monkey of automotive history: ugly. unknown. not very adaptable.

But lovable just the same. . .
Kerouac

I wasn’t sure if it was a car ad or a picture of a mail-order bride delivery wagon. Either way, I’ll take two.