The US made the mistake of helping the Serbian transport industry when they bombed the Yugo factory!!
The export models of the Yugo all have a sticker with a tick on it stuck on the windscreen. This shows that the car actually started withing 5 minutes and therefore was good enough for export.
Ironically Czech mortorcycles proved to be better built and longer lasting than their poorly handling, over weight and quick rusting Japansse counterpart 2 strokes. The Czechs do love to over engineer everything oyt of the best materials they can find, unlike the Japs who use recycled weak steel during the 1970's and 1980's.
Russian motorcycles.... what can I say??!!
The Nazis gave the Soviets the DKW 650 in 1935, when they were all pally, in the hopes of sabotaging the Russian motorcyle industry. Did they succeed?? Maybe!!
The 1970's 175cc Voshkod. This is an exercise bike designed by a sadist. It doesn't actually run!! I know a friend who has one in his collection of 134 motorcycles, and every so often, we go over and burn off the calories pushing is up and down hoping that we might actually see it even fire up or at least cough. He eventually discovered that if you remove the silencer naffle, heat it up with a blowtorch until red hot, refit it quickly and push start the bike, the engine will fire up and run like nothing was stopping it!! He carries a blowtorch with him when he rides it anywhere.
I attended an Eastern Block Red Star rally 8 years ago near Swindon (UK) and people had trailored Voshkods to the rally event in the hope that someone there might know how to start one up. Saturday morning saw various teams of people pushing these littell ugly 175cc bikes up and down and around the field in a sad sort of relay race. It was proposed that perhaps "Push Start The Voshkod" could be an event in the silly games that afternoon.
However, compared to some of the cheap and nasty Chinese bikes flooding the small bike market over here in the UK, the old 1970's Commie bikes, which are still in regular use, totally outclass them on everything from reliability to top speed. Never heard of valve heads falling off of a Russian bike within 2,000 miles ever!!
A local motorcycle repair shop, run by a mate, won't touch a Chinese bike even with two barge poles tied together after struggling to fix a 2006 125cc Chunlan that had dropped all its valves at 2,000 miles. Another friend took apart the transmission of a 50cc Cunglan Starway scooter (He refers to them as "Chubnob Stairlifts" and was horrified to find Nylon bushes where there should normally be ball race bearings on the transmission train. This is the same mate who owns the Voshkod so it takes a lot to horrify him mechanically!!