Of Uzbekistan: The Mighty Lada

There are some Ladas still on the road in Latvia. Few enough that you still notice them, but not so few that you stop and stare.

In Uzbekistan, there are a lot of Ladas on the road. They come in all variety of colors that we don't really use for cars anymore, like vibrant purple and pumpkin orange. A lot of them are being used as taxis, but your correspondent only rode in one Lada taxi - it seemed that whenever I needed a taxi some crummy modern Daewoo was right there. An equal number, however, were being used as pickup trucks. Or at least, used to haul furniture, lumber, appliances, you name it, which I think of as pickup appropriate tasks. This is the best picture I got, but not even close to the biggest stack of stuff seen on top of a Lada. I did not see any of them hauling cattle trailers like you would in a Ford pickup ad, but they still haul a pretty impressive load for such a funny little car.