When I first came across this post, in the form of a screen shot on Quora, I was incredulous. Surely, I thought, it cannot be real? Posted by @GOP — a long-established (2007) account with 3.4 million followers representing, it appears, the Republican National Committee. But it is. I went and checked myself, and found the post on X/Twitter.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen. The Republican National Committee (or at least those in charge of its social media) believe that the best representation of the great American car comes in the form of… the Lada VAZ-2101. Better known back then as the Zhiguli, it was the original Fiat 124 clone that the Soviet Union began to manufacture more than half a century ago in the city of Togliatti. The automobile plant there was built with Fiat’s participation in what was dubbed by some the deal of the century.
To be sure, the Zhiguli was not a bad car by 1970 standards, not by any means. It was a basic vehicle, but it was built well and drove well. With its four-stroke, 1200 cubic centimeter engine and four-speed manual transmission, it could get up to 100 mph on the open highway. Its fuel consumption (roughly 10 liters/100 km or roughly 24 mpg) was not great but hey, gasoline was cheap in 1970 and there were far worse gas guzzlers. And the car was robust enough to survive Soviet roads, so it felt like a speed demon on Hungary’s then only freeway, connecting Budapest to the resort area around Lake Balaton.
How do I know? Well, my parents had one, for starters. My father sold our Wartburg some time in 1968 or 69, and when the Zhiguli was introduced, he decided to switch rather than wait longer for another Wartburg (waiting lists for new cars were quite long in 1970 Hungary.) We got the car and fell in love with it. It was not glamorous or anything but it was a good car. It did what a car was supposed to do: it worked. Worked in the dead of winter, in the middle of summer, took you from place to place, and it was reliable. And it was even moderately comfortable.
That particular Zhiguli was still running roughly 25 years later, when I last saw it on the road during one of my visits to Hungary. It had a new owner, but back then, license plates belonged to the vehicle, not the owner, so I had no trouble identifying our old family sedan: IK-36-49.
But wait… What exactly is a Zhiguli doing in this poster? A 2025 poster, presented by the Republican National Committee no less, ostensibly about making American auto manufacturing great again?
I admit I find it somewhat incomprehensible. What is the intended message? Is it (gasp!) perhaps some subversive signal, confirming that Trump sold America out to Putin? Or is it that Trump’s regressive tariffs and budget bill will soon do to the American economy what Brezhnev’s era of stagnation did to the USSR?
The mind boggles. We live in surreal times.
It’s so crazy that I initially thought it to be a fake by local propaganda. But seemingly no. I read commenters suggest to fire the person responsible for such a mistake, but I suspect the issue is deeper and the whole chain of responsible persons (who appointed whom) up to the summit is to be blame. And probably to be fired. Anyway I read some assumptions that Trump becomes more incoherent in his expressions and may follow Biden.
Could it be generated by some AI-assistant?
Aside from the mistake poster is bit too silly anyway and poor in design. And I wonder if there is a way to make automobile industry in any country “great again” as roughly similar issues are in US, Germany, Russia etc. China is blooming and as my friend, born and resident in US, explained to me, it’s almost impossible to make competitive cars and obey various demands of labor unions at the same time.