One of the best ways to learn about history is to learn from those who have experienced it. And as I assume we all have working memories, why don't we teach each orher some history of cars? I'll try to provide some of my memories of growing up in Puławy, Poland, in the 00s. Back in the day, American cars were some hot shit, thanks to all these glam rap videos. Who wouldn't want a Hummer, a Viper, a Corvette or even just a Mustang back in these days? One of my mom's friends had a Chrysler PT Cruiser, and it was one cool thing back then. This brings us to another trend of those days - minivans. Every mass-market company wanted a piece of the action, and even some luxury ones (e.g. Mercedes) did. There were city minivans (Peugeot 1007, with its sliding doors in a city car), small minivans (rather booming segment), large minivans (from the old hat VW Sharan/Seat Alhambra to the huge Chrysler Grand Voyager), sporty minivans (Ford S-Max) and even the Renault Avantime, a coupe minivan! However, the #1 thing was compact 7-seat minivans. Safe diesel family haulers from a diverse roster of makers, from Renault to Mazda. They're still on the road, waiting for something expensive to break down. Yeah, break down. New cars of those days weren't masters of durability, especially in expensive parts. Quality assurance wasn't on par with technical development, so new fancy family wagons and minivans would freak out electronically (sometimes leaving you outside), leave clouds of smoke, and run up repair bills (at least picked up by warranties back then). But I was in Poland, so few people had money for that. A more popular trend was sticking a rear trunk on a small car, so people who couldn't afford anything nicer could buy themselves something like a Renault Thalia, Fiat Albea, Dacia Logan or Chevy Aveo. But these could not compete with the post-tariff common EU market import cars. A deluge of used cars drove prices down. Couple that with a lack of sentiment for communist cars, and one could buy a working Fiat 125p for less than 500 PLN (~$165 today), a 126p or Trabant for less than 200 PLN, and a Syrena for less than a hundred. (assuming these cars had paperwork - if they didn't, it'd be quite a lot less). But for some reason, the car crowd wasn't buying depreciated BMWs and Benzes. The trend was to pimp your ride as far as possible - why buy an E21, E30, E12 or E28, if you can give your Trabant a pearlescent paintjob, a bodykit, custom interior, a banging sound system and alloys? However, the more expensive the car got, the cleaner it was. MK1 Golfs had a modicum of taste, Mk2 were lightly modded, and anyhting from a Mazda 323F up was kept relatively stock. So that's my own two cents. Wanna share your memories?
I remeber, about 10 years ago, number of modern cars was small comparing to this day. On some places, you would think you are located in 80s or 90s, cause there were many old cars. Among very common cars at that time were: Opel Kadetts E, VW Golfs 2, Ladas, Opel Asconas, Zastavas (they are still common). Zastava was still producing cars, and there was decent number of brand new Zastavas. You could buy a new Yugo or Florida, and even with Peugeot engine. One of most common new cars back then was Dacia Logan. My family even had one. It's a good car, inexpensive, but very reliable and cheap to maintain. Other newer cars were mostly B segment cars: Chevrolet Aveo, Renault Clio and Thalia, Peugeot 206, etc. Bigger and more expensive cars were present, but in smaller numbers. One car that litteraly changed car landscape, was Fiat Punto II, or better, its knock-off Zastava 10. After the start of production of thst car in Zastava and later in FCA Serbia, as Fiat Punto Classic, interest for Italian cars grew a lot. Punto is very popular thanks its low price, low price of parts, low fuel consumption, nimbleness which makes it perfect for city use. But, many people who owned some old Zastava or Fiat, bought large number of Puntos through scrappage scheme. Although it was small and relatively slow, it was even better than some 10-20 year old banger. End of 00s saw increasing number of modern used cars, even bigger and more luxury ones. Taste of people for cars didn't change that much, as they still prefer German diesel cars (VW Golf and Passat, Audi A4 and A6, etc.).
In Poland, we like about the some stuff - German compact/midsize/executive diesels. Polish cars were a thing for a shorter time - the FSO Polonez and the Lublin kicked the bucket in the early 00s, and FSO only kept selling licensed Lanoses and Matizes until EU used imports drove their brand out of business.
I forgot to mention that up until the late-00s some people used horsecarts. Rarely, but they did. Now, even those guys use late 80s/early 90s beater vans, or 70s tractors.
