Russia’s automotive time machine

A boxy Soviet-era car brand, the “Moskvitch,” could be making a comeback in Russia, said Andrew Roth in The Guardian. The Moscow city government said this week it planned to nationalize a factory belonging to the French carmaker Renault following its exit from the country. The plant will be repurposed to produce the Moskvitch, a passenger car brand last made two decades ago.The development was “met with ridicule by Russians with long memories.” The Moskvitch was one of the Soviet Union’s most popular car brands—but like a lot of cars coming out of the Communist bloc, it was not known for quality. For Russians who have glumly watched the country’s return to Soviet-era isolation, “the revival of the Moskvitch was the perfect punch line. ”The Ukraine war has given Russia “a time machine,” one joke goes. Unfortunately, it can “only move the country back to the Soviet Union.”