Saturday, November 24, 2018

Blacked-Out German Cars in Lithuania in the 90s

I spent a good eight years of my childhood in Lithuania where I was born. I've recounted some stories of the car scene there in other articles but they were just snippets. I thought I would tell you a little more.


I'll start from the top - there's not much. Middle class civilians drove older Audis, Peugeots, Alfa Romeos, Opels, Volkswagens, and Fords actually. Kinda stands out a little, huh? Poorer people had dirt cheap ($200 at the time) Ladas. I forget the model but it's the simplest four door car that came out of the 80s and possibly 70s... That design didn't change for years.

These things were NOT reliable at all. It was common to see someone push-starting their car routinely. I mean, to go to work. I should mention that 90% of cars were manual and there was a stigma against automatics. People wrongly thought they were less reliable but correctly knew that manual cars got slightly better mileage.

That was and still is important because in Europe, gas can be €6 per liter. There's almost 3 liters in a gallon...

So who drove the new German luxury cars? Well, it was the people that had more money and by that I mean the mafia. Here's a fun story.

I was being driven by my grandpa in a 90s Audi - the big four door - as we drove up to a scene. There was three cars, all black. I don't know how many of each but it was a mixture of BMWs and Mercedes.

There was no garages like that...*

I'm thinking "Cool!" while my grandpa is thinking "Oh sh$&!" because lo and behold, they all stop haphazardly on the road as a bunch of dudes with chains and other blunt weapons got out to... Well, I never found out because my grandpa went over the curb and floored it but I can tell you there was a big blood stain there later! Fun!

Some of my readers have never had the experience of seeing, say, a Ferrari for the first time and being blown away. I didn't see my first one until I was maybe 13 and it was a blacked out Testarossa. But I did see what us kids thought was basically a supercar when I was in Lithuania. A Honda CRX.


Remember, cars were rarely imported and if they were, it was from America. Some of us had seen a few American cars but a Honda? It was the talk of the neighborhood. I fondly remember it having a Firebird logo on the hood just like a Pontiac Firebird from back in the day. Of course I didn't know where it came from at the time - it just looked awesome!

My little friend's sister's boyfriend had a red E30, that bastard, and as a 7 year old kid, I bugged him for probably six months to just take me for a ride in it! I knew BMW was good but it wasn't that. I just loved the car.


Cars are in my blood. My grandpa on my father's side was a professional rally racer way back in the day. My pops imported cars from France when I was younger and we did rallycross here in America.

I thought some of you may enjoy learning about what the car scene in certain countries is like. I'll probably be doing more personal stories when it comes to cars. Now, however, I'm gonna go relax.

Last night - yes, at night because I have no patience - I painted the one fender on my car that was actually already re-painted but badly. The shade of the white I'm using is completely different from the original paint which kinda sucks for now but I can tell it's going to look so much better.

I did a decent job at night so I'm going to focus on doing a good job during the daytime one of these days. I find I've gotten pretty good at spraying. I'm really picking up the technique quick.

Thank you guys for following and have a good one.

* Typically your garage would be five miles or so from your house along with a couple hundred other people's garages. That's a leftover from the communist days. That made it much easier to find like minded people to work on cars with. 

- Rokas K.

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