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Published: August 29th 2013
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On Olkhon Island Apparently, the Lada 2107 is the cheapest car in the world. Not only economic in fuel consumption, service costs and spare parts are astonishingly cheap. This fact I’ve discovered for myself as I’ve repaired and tinkered with Agatha over the course of my journey. One of the first improvements I made was to change the cracked windscreen she came with when I bought her. The cracks were in my line of sight and distracted me while driving. However, at the Lada garage in St. Petersburg I snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and fatally agreed to have a windscreen with a tinted band at the top. A Lada 2107 is quite a small car, so that things like traffic lights and road signs are visible in the top part of the windscreen. The tinted band made them very difficult to discern and irritated me more than the cracked glass had done. So I visited an auto market back in Cheboksary to get another new windscreen (they only cost 30 pounds). Cheaper than the official dealer, a mechanic at the market changed the windscreen for the grand sum of 4 pounds! I also picked up a second spare wheel (20 pounds),
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Dust on the road handles for the rear windows (50p each) and a roof rack (30 pounds) which I only recently got round to assembling (she looks a bit more Mongol Ralley now). After the dusty roads I changed the air filter (2 pounds) and in response to the engine becoming a little sluggish, replaced the spark plugs (a set of 4 for 4 pounds).
But what makes the Lada 2107 especially cheap is that, as an Englishman driving a Russian car, everyone is keen to help you. I took my dented wheel to a tyre centre and had it bashed back into shape; the mechanic wouldn’t accept a penny. Likewise, trying to resolve why the engine kept stalling, I was given free advice at one garage then ended up taking the car to a friend of a friend of a friend, a very sage looking man of advanced age, who worked on the car for the whole afternoon, cleaning the carburettor and other parts of the engine, and solving the problem. To my embarrassment, he also wouldn’t accept any money for his work. I think Russians, who are often extremely cynical about their own country, are glad to meet someone who is
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A bone-shaking experience enthusiastic about it.
In general Agatha has been a satisfying drive. Her 1.5 litre engine allowed me to reach 150km / hour, although she may have been flattering herself as I later noticed that at rest the speedometer registers 10km / hour. Like many of the best cars in the world, Ladas have rear wheel drive, a cause of great excitement on loose gravel and sandy roads.
I had two more days of such roads, taking me from the north end of Baikal to the south. This was some of the most remote driving I’ve experienced and the petrol stations were up to a couple of hundred kilometres apart. I’d already had the experience of finally locating a petrol station only to find that it wasn’t working due to a power cut, so I filled up my jerry can to the brim. This turned out not to be such a wise move, as the jolting road caused some of the fuel to spill out through the perished cap into the boot of the car, so I wore clothes that smelt of petrol for the next few days.
I can say that I’m now familiar with just about
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A village west of Lake Baikal all the gradations and nuances of provincial roads in the summer: the loose gravel on which it’s possible to travel at some speed, the hillocks on the mud roads, the ruts left by lorries in old tarmac, the undulations in sandy roads, the pot-holed asphalt surfaces which are a puncture risk, the severe bumps to be had on concrete slab surfaces. I completed the picture with my experience of the bone-shaker: the furrowed surface over which driving slower than 80km/hr caused the car to rattle dramatically. Ironically, all these roads become much easier to drive on in winter, when the snow packs to make an even surface of routes impassable in summer. Quite a number of Russian cities are only accessible by road in winter.
The drive from Severobaikalsk to Olkhon was some of the most enjoyable driving of my trip. The near absence of other cars (about one every 20 minutes) and the beauty of the landscape caused me to relax and make my way unhurriedly. I stopped to admire the natural landscapes as well as strange-looking abandoned industrial facilities.
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