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Following the runaway success of Andy Thompson's Cars of the Soviet Union, Haynes is now publishing Cars of Eastern Europe, by the same author (3 February 2011).
From body shells made from cotton waste to rear-engined V8 limousines and air-cooled superminis, this book offers a similarly irresistible blend of nostalgia and idiosyncrasy, along with a unique collection of original photographs.
Between 1945 and 1990 car engineers and designers behind the Iron Curtain worked not to the whims and fancies of car buyers but to the plans and diktats of government bureaucrats. Despite effectively missing out on the first century of the Industrial Revolution, they created a car industry capable of rivalling its older neighbours in France, Germany and Italy in less than fifty years. And then overnight they found themselves cast adrift and unprepared on the wild seas of the free market.
Cars of Eastern Europe tells the story of the cars and vans made in Poland, the former Yugoslavia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and East Germany. In a region that stretches from the Black Sea to the Baltic, the vehicles were as varied as the nations themselves.
Skoda spanned the decades enduring successfully both communism and capitalism, as well known in the West as domestic marques.
Trabant and Wartburg, the world's last two-stroke powered cars, survived almost unknown before fading away in the bright lights of capitalism as communism's Iron Curtain was drawn back. The Serbian Yugo managed to take America by storm before post-communist Yugoslavia disintegrated into civil war.
Dacia, whose exports were once cold shouldered even by its socialist comrades, has been reborn to produce a truly global car, spreading out from Romania and Europe to India, Iran and Mexico.
Now that Eastern Europe has come in from the cold, this book offers a unique and timely survey of the motor industry in this often overlooked part of the continent.
The Author
Andy Thompson has had a lifetime interest in the day-to-day cars and vans that are the real backbone of the world's transport systems. He has owned more than 70 different vehicles, ranging from a 20-year-old Toyota Starlet used to travel across the Sahara and West Africa to a primer grey Morris pick-up used to haul washing machines, car spares and bales of hay around East Anglia. Brought up in the Midlands, Andy lived for a time in Bulgaria before returning home to settle in north Shropshire with his family and dogs. |
Review copies available
Notes to Editors:
The information on this page is supplied courtesy of Haynes Publishing, please credit accordingly if you intend to use it. For more information or to request a review copy please contact Spirit PR on 0117 944 1415 or email haynes@spiritpublicrelations.co.uk
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