
When Chevrolet Ruled Uzbekistan (2019) - bilifuduo
https://www.ozy.com/flashback/how-chevrolet-ruled-uzbekistan/94984
======
Maksadbek
I am from this country and what is written there is exactly as it is.

It is very hard or impossible to come to a car store to buy a car and go back
with that car home in one day. You must first make an order and wait for
months(usually 4-6) while your car be ready.

Moreover, if you want to buy a car from foreign manufacturers (Mersedes-Benz,
BMW, Toyota, etc) you have to pay 2X of its original price.

~~~
bfirsh
I visited the country a couple of years ago, and a thing that puzzled me was
why almost all the cars were white. Do you know why this is?

Some said it was because it is better at keeping the cars cool, but this
doesn't explain why surrounding Kazakhstan/Tajikistan/etc had different color
cars.

The best explanation I heard was the president liked white cars, so only
allowed white cars to get made. This seems most plausible to me, and seems
like similar things happened in Turkmenistan:
[https://www.motor1.com/news/226932/turkmenistan-president-
ba...](https://www.motor1.com/news/226932/turkmenistan-president-bans-black-
cars/)

~~~
Maksadbek
You're right, 90% of cars are white coloured. Honestly I have no idea why it
is that. Prabably this worth some research.

But usually when my friends wanted to buy a car, they chose the white color by
the following criteria: it does not heat much like other colors on the sun. If
we take into account that there are not much parking lots and garages with a
roof, white colored car is the best choice.

~~~
xenospn
In Israel, people say it's "easier to sell a white car".

------
trhway
This is final assembly only, an absolute minimum required by law to qualify
out of heavily tariffed foreign made car category (the countries of former
USSR, except for Baltic ones, like to highly tax foreign import in order to
supposedly protect "domestic manufacturer" \- as result nobody has good car
building industry). There have been several such Daewoo/Chevrolet plants
across the former USSR. Russia for example also builds Ford and BMW that way.
For example back in mid-199x Elabuga (city in Russia) Chevrolet Blazer factory
had extremely sweet conditions on the Chevrolet Blazers to be assembled there
- basically attach the bumpers and some other details - it took 1 hour for 3
workers per car.

~~~
vbezhenar
Russia used to have few car manufacturers and produced almost every car part
rather than importing it. After USSR collapse those cars were not very
competitive, especially with used cars from Japan and Europe, unfortunately,
so those factories either died or optimized (like VAZ which is part of
Renault-Nissan now and is moving to just build western Renault designs rather
than develop and improve their LADA cars). That's quite tragic situation,
plenty of people are losing jobs, country is losing an expertise.

I'm living in Kazakhstan and we have foreign import tax and "localized builds"
(very minimal work is done). But actually we're in economic union with Russia,
so most of new cars are built in Russia and imported without much taxes. So
it's not that bad here. AFAIK Uzbekistan recently joined EAEU, so, I guess,
situation should improve over few years.

~~~
trhway
>Russia used to have few car manufacturers and produced almost every car part
rather than importing it.

yes and no. Significant share (seems most) of major USSR car manufacturers
started as a transfer of technology deal and improvement on its own has been
pretty small and incremental since then. VAZ - Fiat (196x), GAZ - Ford (193x),
AZLK/Moskvich was "refreshed" by the complete factory transfer of the Opel's
one right after the WWII, ZIL - original 1917 and total re-equipment in 193x -
to build Italian and American cars under license
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZiL#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZiL#History)),
UAZ models naturally trace back to the GAZ, and its most known and widely used
-
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UAZ-469](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UAZ-469)
\- hasn't changed much in 50 years. KAMAZ though doesn't look like an outright
transfer and is kind of local success story, yet also not much improvements in
50 years (probably for the same reason of absence of any real competition as
the USSR planned economy basically segmented manufacturers into their own
quasi-monopoly segments) .

~~~
SomeoneFromCA
Older Kamaz trucks however, looks precisely like Scania trucks, to the point I
could not believe my own eyes when I saw one.

------
bawana
Are tractors heavily tariffed? Motorcycles?

~~~
Maksadbek
Every vehicle is heavily tariffed. Maybe that is the reason why you very
rarely see someone on a Harley-Davidson or Triumph. Tractors are usually
imported by the government.

