The Dark Wob

Right, as promised a week or so ago, here's the best of Borovets & the surrounding area from late January 2020.

Firstly a couple more pics of the Riva taxi, as posted before as a teaser:

Staying with Ladas, there were lots of Nivas on resort... this is one used by the local fire brigade (the blue light bar even includes the English word "FIRE"):

Not strictly a car, but this shonky pallet sledge deserves an honourable mention:

Another Niva:

Now something a little bit special... this Rascal-esque 4x4 was badged as a Subaru:

Cavalier (or rather Vectra A) Saloon:

And then this modern munter... a Ssangyong Actyon Ratola. It didn't look good from any angle, which makes it ace in my book:
^ Just LOOK at that face! The PT Cruiser has competition!


Now for something a little different... we got to smoke around an ex-communist forest on shite Skidoos for about an hour, it cost around £40 which was a mega-barg. All of them were fucked in some way. Here's mine:
Extras included rev counter deletion & screen held together with twisted rusty metal wire...

Right, back to the shite. When's the last time you saw a Fiat Strada in the wild? This one's badged as a Ritmo, of course, and you won't believe this so I'll type it slowly - it wasn't rusty AT ALL. The black thing on the rear wheel arch is a plastic arch protector.

Now for a bit of military shite... these old Soviet 122 mm cannon were on display in the nearby town of Samokov, which used to be the headquarters of Bulgaria's rocket artillery during the cold war.

While in Samokov we did a bit more shite spotting... here's a shy Barkas:

Departing Riva:

And a tidy Audi 80:

During the trip to Samokov I missed the chance to pap a couple more Rivas, an epic 6x6 Tatra truck and several GAZ-69s, couldn't get my camera phone out in time. Soz about that.


Here's a locally-registered 110 Defender to compensate. Land Rovers weren't at all common in Bulgaria, although I did see a couple of locally-registered RHD Discos that clearly belonged to British ex-pats.

And to finish off, here are some drive-by pics of various tat taken from the taxi window on the way back to Sofia:

Ah, bollocks. Just reaslised this should have gone in "Motorised conveyances".

Never mind. I suppose one of the mods will move it, if they can be arsed. Or not.

Moved for you old chap, as you asked so nicely.

Nice to see that Ssangyong has remained true to the Rodius design language.

Ritmo (which spellchecks to titmouse on an iPhone) is delightful

NergleFuttocks wrote: ↑Sun Feb 02, 2020 1:38 pm Ritmo (which spellchecks to titmouse on an iPhone) is delightful

It is mind.

The Ritmo was in daily use, it belonged to one of the firemen. My Bulgarian wasn't good enough to chat to him about it, sadly.

I would have thought the Vic Reeves thigh rubbing manoeuvre would have sufficed.

The Ssanyong looks like it has been inspired by the Korando.
If you can be arsed, I'd be interested in a ski report.

I think that I'm getting old (or even older) as given some of the designs coming out of BMW and Mercedes nowadays even things like the Rodius, Pontiac Aztek etc. don't look as bad as I used to think they were.