And Chrysler Thinks They Have Supplier Problems?
On a you-can't-make-this-up page of news briefs from Moscow News Weekly (featuring such hilariously Russian headlines as "Newborn Babies Dumped In Chelyabinsk's Trash" and "Lemur Smugglers Caught In Southwest Russia") comes a little warning to companies looking to cash-in on Russia's booming car market. Thirty-six-year-old Vyacheslav Shirshov was found stabbed to death in his apartment in the town of Tolyatti. Shirsov was the head of procurement for the enormous AvtoVAZ group, known to the west as the makers of the infamous Lada. The responsibility of choosing raw material suppliers is a risky proposition, at least in Russia, as investigators are pointing to Shirsov's job as the likely cause of his untimely death. The news brief concludes by stating that Tolyatti "has a reputation for turf wars between criminal gangs seeking control over the lucrative auto industry." As GM has been in business in this quaint little burg since 2001 (jointly manufacturing the Chevy Niva with AvtoVAZ), it has no reason to worry about it's recently announced joint venture just up the Volga in Nizhny Novgorod. I'm sure it's figured out whom to bribe by now.
More by Edward Niedermeyer
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My parents had exactly this model of car. What a joke it was. Yet I can say it was built far better than Chevrolets or pontiacs, without supercosmic cheapness of grey plastics. It had vinyl chrome, and honest Soviet simplicity. No power anything. meaning - if you didn`t eat breakfast, you had no chance in shifting in reverse. This fiat 124 clone was simple in maintenance, so simple that even a retard could fix it , once shown which part to hammer. once we lost a tyre while going about 60 miles an hour . This tire passed us and decided to roll into wheat field. We were looking for it for 2 hours. Didn`t find it.