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Chita, Squirrel, Ant: Soviet rare cars, cars
Yuri A. Dolmatovsky, Candidate of Technical Sciences, a talented engineer and artist, founder and theorist of the school of Soviet automobile design, a well-known writer, popularizer and journalist, was the main advocate of the wagon layout. A long time ago several generations of boys were brought up on the books and articles of Dolmatovsky, who tried to infuse us with his great passion for cars and support his “fellow mania”.
The birth and death of “Cheats”: the first Soviet car NAMI-013
Having completed the development of cargo bodies and trailed toilets, in 1949, Yuri Dolmatovsky, head of the bodywork bureau of the Scientific Automobile Institute (NAMI), began to fulfill his cherished dream – the creation of avant-garde car assemblies, which were then called trambuses. Thus was born the idea of a revolutionary car NAMI-013, which was developed by the engineer Konstantin Zeyvang and the artist-designer Vladimir Aryamov. Continue reading
Five reasons to love and hate Lifan Smily
They say that if you see something that looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then this is a duck. But if something like the Mini flashes in the traffic, this does not mean that you actually saw the car of the famous British brand. It is possible that you caught a “Chinese” mimicking him by the name of Lifan Smily.
The Smily compact hatchback, belonging to the A segment, was first shown at the 2008 Beijing Motor Show. However, then he was called (and is still called) Lifan 320, and the name Smily was assigned to the model exclusively for the Russian market.
When someone says that Smily is a clone or a copy of Mini, this is at least not true. The car is really made with a big eye on the iconic minicar, but it is rather a “variation on the theme” than direct copying. Continue reading