Author Archives: Klasika

Having Found El Dorado!

Antanas Vaičeliūnas’ article about the Klasika Club member Virginijus Kučinskas, printed in the Šiaurės Rytai newspaper on February 2, 2013.

Virginijus Kučinskas

A car is not a luxury item, but means of transport. This statement made by the great Ostap Bender, which later became a winged phrase, was never implemented by the Soviet government during the entire time of its existence.  With great difficulty having saved a bunch of Roubles and having waited patiently in the line for his time to buy a car, an average Soviet citizen used to get a miserable Moskvich or a „Lada”, a car hatched from the Italian Fiat 124 model. A man basically knew that he acquired a joy and a misery (if not for the rest of his life, at least for the next twenty years), and that it would be easier to change his wife than the old tires to the new ones without having acquaintances in the right post.After Lithuania escaped from the Soviet regime, a tsunami of used cars from the West overwhelmed our homeland. After twenty years of independence, a Moskvich or a Zaporozhets that one might occasionally encounter on the road, became quite a unique experience.