The ZAZ Zaporozhets subcompact: A Soviet Car with Several WTH Features

When was the last time you rode in a car with a hole in the floorboard? Probably never, but it's entirely possible, say, if it was a very old car with a rusted out floorboard. Perhaps the hole even had an ad-hoc covering over it. There was a car with a hole in the floorboard right from the factory...

Vladimir Putin with his ZAZ-968. Photo by www.kremlin.ru

The ZAZ interior. One of my 2005 pictures.

The ZAZ Zaporozhets subcompact was produced from 1966 to 1994, in numerous variants. (An earlier variant was produced from 1960-1969, but this article is on the second generation models) You won't see a Zaporozhets simply called by its name. These models were produced as the ZAZ-966 (1966-1972), ZAZ-968 (1971-1978), ZAZ-968A (1973-1980), and ZAZ-968M (1979-1994), each version updated and modernized over the last. This is the first point of unusuality. Normally, when a car is redesigned, it is totally replaced, not produced concurrently with an older version. (Some other vehicles have used this practice, but the majority haven't)

The Zaporozhets also came with "trim lines", but they were not trim lines in the usual sense. The trim lines had unusual names (B, B2, A, and others for the 968) and were designed for people with missing limbs. There were variants for people missing one foot, both feet, and arms. These were sold to the disabled with permission from the Soviet government, many to veterans with war related injury. An additional variant had a less powerful engine than the base variant. 

And then there was the fishing hole. On the passenger side floorboard, there was a hole drilled with a cover over it. The idea was to park on a frozen lake or body of water, dig a hole in the ice, and fish while in your car. This was the only vehicle ever produced with a hole intentionally put on the bottom of the car. 

Fishing hole not included. 

About This Blog

This blog covers cars that are unusual.

The Mazda Roadpacer: A Big Luxury Car with a Little Rotary Engine

 Photo by Japanese Wikipedia user Taisyo.
I say "Mazda", you say "zoom zoom". Mazda makes a broad line of small and midsized cars and SUVs, with an emphasis on sport and driving dynamics. Perhaps their best known vehicles are their series of rotary engined sports cars. The rotary engine has been wholly confined to the RX series sports cars since about 1980, but in the 1970s Mazda slapped a rotary engine in pretty much anything that they made.

During this time, Mazda also built a luxury car, as expensive as a contemporary Cadillac Fleetwood. The Mazda Roadpacer wasn't particularly big by today's standard - my 2011 Honda Accord V6 has about the same weight - but it was huge by Mazda standards, and being sold only in 1970s Japan, it was a very large vehicle for the time and place. The Roadpacer wasn't even built by Mazda - it was a re-badged Holden Premier, a full size Australian sedan. Mazda took the Premier and fitted a 130 horsepower rotary engine and equipped the car to the gills, including automatically locking doors, a speed warning system that activated at 56 mph, an in-car Dictaphone system, and a stereo that could be controlled from front and back seats.

Produced from 1975 to 1977, only 800 cars were sold, and most were sold to Japanese government officials. Most of these 800 were crushed in later years, making the Roadpacer extremely rare. The car's failure can be attributed to various factors: the price ($10,000 at the time) and fuel consumption (9 mpg, about like a Hummer H2) in the wake of the first gas crisis. The vehicle was also slow, saddled with slow acceleration to a top speed of a tepid 103 mph.

Why would Mazda sell a slow, gas guzzling, Australian built luxury car? Competition. Japanese luxury cars only reached the USA in the late 1980s, but have been sold in Japan for as long as cars have been sold there. Toyota, Nissan, Mitsubishi, and even Isuzu had luxury models out by 1975.