As some of you know, I have for a long time had a car-crush on the Lada Niva. It's a Russian 4x4 car, and I think the style is incredibly cool. Here’s one in Tbilisi, in front of the Anchiskhati church. I took this photo because it seemed very representative of Georgia, with the palm tree, Soviet car and old church.
I was going to buy one when I lived in Belgrade, until I discovered that they have a maximum speed of about 50 mph, making it not very suitable for highway driving. They are apparently very good at off-road driving, but I wasn’t going to be doing much of that.
Anyway, most places these cars have no particular cultural significance; they’re bought by people who want a cheap 4x4. But Armenia, I’ve discovered that they are a real symbol. The first day I was in Yerevan, I saw this Niva, and I thought it was funny to have a Niva with these fancy rims, so I took a photo:
And then 15 seconds later I saw another one with exactly the same rims, and then another, and another… probably 95 percent of these Nivas have the same rims.
The Nivas are also almost always white here, and usually very clean, in contrast to other places where they come in all sorts of colors and are often pretty beat up or at least dirty.
So asking around, I discovered that there is a certain kind of person who drives these fancy white Nivas. It was described to me by one young cosmopolitan Yerevan woman as: “macho, has money but not a lot, wears a gold chain and expensive clothes but in strange combinations, and has a girlfriend with fake blonde hair.” And he generally listens to rabiz music, the Armenian equivalent of Serbian turbofolk, Bulgarian chalga, Turkish arabesque and whatever other countries have this sort of thing.
A much less common variant in Yerevan but somewhat more so in Meghri and Stepanakaert (and so, I suppose, other small towns) is the ordinary Lada or Zhiguli with the fancy rims.
I was told that in Yerevan you can see Zhigulis really tricked out, with neon lights underneath and so on, but to my great disappointment I never saw one. Anyone who knows where I can, let me know…
Josh, thanks for the reportingS! Here's an anthem to the pimp-car culture in Armenia, called something like "We are - our cars."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45HKX0qUjMQ
Posted by: Emil | June 04, 2007 at 08:51 AM
Go to baku and you will see the shigulli with all the neons and super fast engines.You will never see more of these cars in one time then in Baku.
Posted by: pieter | August 03, 2008 at 12:16 AM