Garbus za tysiąc butelek wódki — kpili z niego, a ratował życie

A Beetle for a Thousand Bottles of Vodka—They Mocked It, Yet It Saved Lives. This is the story of the ZAZ-965, the cheapest and most ridiculed car in the entire USSR, mocked by the entire country, calling it a Beetle, a Dam, and a Soapbox. Yet this clumsy little thing, born in a Zaporizhzhya combine factory inspired by the Fiat 600, did something no black limousine had ever done. It put an ordinary person behind the wheel, cost about 20 times the average salary, and, according to folk legend, cost as much as 1,000 bottles of vodka. In this episode, you'll learn about its strange, air-cooled V4 engine with a displacement of 746 to 887 cubic centimeters, its famous suicide doors, the smallest 13-inch wheels in the country, and touching versions with manual steering, issued free of charge to war invalids for seven years. I'll also tell how this same much-ridiculed engine found its way into the war in the LuAZ-967 amphibious assault vehicle, debunk the myth of the tank starter motor, and show why this little guy, produced until 1994, outlived even the Soviet Union. The music used in the film is "Eyes of Glory" by Aakash Gandhi and "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" by Cooper Cannell. The photos are from archive.org and are publicly available.