I know we try to avoid overt politics here at the Autopian, but sometimes something so bonkers happens that there’s really no way to not address it. And I think the category of things that qualify as “so bonkers” absolutely must include a major American political party posting a picture of the president on social media with a message about “making automobiles great again” and then choosing an old Soviet-era Lada as the car to show behind him. Because that just happened.
There’s been a lot of talk about the Trump Administration’s “Big Beautiful Bill” that is outside the scope of our humble car-lovers’ site here, but there is a provision in the bill to effectively remove fines automakers accrue for not meeting fuel economy standards, which proponents of the bill believe will help the American automobile industry.
This point was mentioned in a (seemingly poorly-researched) post from The Daily Signal, which is what the Republican party was referencing in this post they sent out last night on the X social media platform:
The One Big Beautiful bill will drive the return of the great American car.
???????????????? pic.twitter.com/poAsG8pDKg— GOP (@GOP) July 31, 2025
Just in case the tweet gets taken down, here’s a screenshot of the relevant image:
Okay, fine, Make Automobiles Great Again, and the Big Beautiful Bill will “drive the return of the great American car.” You’d think with that sort of sentiment in mind, they’d have picked some sort of legendary American car to feature behind the president, right? Maybe an old Mustang, or a GTO, or a Toronado or a Jeep or a Charger or even a Corvair or, hell, a Gremlin? Something American and iconic.
But the GOP (or whoever made the graphic) took a very different approach here. The car proudly stationed behind the President, proclaiming a re-birth of great American cars, appears to be a Lada 2101.
The Lada 2101 was built from 1970 to 1988 and was based on the Fiat 124; it was also known as the Lada 1200, Lada 1300, and VAZ 2101. It was, of course, a Soviet/Russian car and about the least American car I can think of, by nearly any standard.
So why pick that car for this image?
I even found where the photo came from: a stock image site called Pixabay, where this particular image is tagged with “Lada, Yellow, Vehicle image. Free for use.”
Since it’s free for use, I may as well show you the original image here, right? It’s free!
Look, you can even see that weird mark on the C-pillar! This is the same car.
This all brings us to the real question: why?
Was someone trolling the GOP? Was this intentional? Is it possible some designer knew nothing about cars and somehow, by chance, just decided to use an old Soviet car in this tweet about making American cars great again?
Again, I’d like to try and avoid any overt political discussion here, but I think we can all agree that this is absolutely ridiculous. I’d be writing the same story if the Democratic Party put a post on Instagram of Joe Biden crowing about great American cars in front of a Zaporozhets or something. This is objectively hilarious.
The Republican party is posting pictures of the President cheering in front of classic Soviet iron. What a weird world we’re in.
Mr. Gorbachev, Rebuild this wall!
The GOP gets their talking points from Russia, may as well get the promotional material from there too.
Well it appears to me that whomever made that post didn’t have a lot of time and was russian to get the job done because they didn’t have a lada time 😉
( Sorry, I just had to add some levity with all of the current dystopian time we are living in) 🙁
And when Trump saw it, he said “That car is my Favorit. People will Niva notice it’s Russian. How much did it cost us to use that car?”
Response from the person working on it:
“ZILch”
Where can I get Samara those puns?
And the Favorit was a Skoda, who could forget their slogan, “Buy a Car, Get a Czech”.
What do you call an old Skoda at the top of a hill?
A miracle.
Apparently, we will get fooled again
Not me, I lived through his first term and vowed that no intelligent person would ever vote for this Douche bag again, but here we are!!! ┐( ´～｀ )┌
Pretty much guarantee the designer behind this just wanted “yellow car.” That’s absolutely the colour that stands out. You’re not going to use blue or red, because those colours are reserved for 47, and it would just look weird. Maybe less weird with what we know now, but still weird. And they were likely told “it has to be an affordable car.”
Voila! Drop those search terms into yandex, and I bet you get a yellow Lada. Ezpz.
(It’s even funnier because this had to have multiple approvers on it and no one caught it. Or they’re all trolling everyone)
The Daily Signal is run by the same people that couldn’t even make it writing for the similarly named The Daily Wire. And The Daily Wire’s current writers don’t even know where Guatemala is, so that should tell you how deep under the barrel this particular scraping spot is.
I’m betting they paid some Eastern European or Filipino person who knows English to put together the draft format for the article before it was published. If so there’s several layers of hypocrisy and irony in there.
Look, they’re not smart, okay? The get elected by appealing to the basest of human emotions, but they suck balls at actual governing. Every cabinet post is currently filled by someone woefully unqualified for the job.
This is what you voted for, geniuses.
“Look, they’re not smart, okay? The get elected”
Incompetence and laziness seems like the best explanation. During Trump’s first term Turning Point USA accidentally used what was obviously an anti-Trump parody of the Presidential seal at one of their Klan rall- I mean conferences. It had a double-headed eagle clutching cash in one set of talons and golf clubs in the other and the Latin “E Pluribus Unum” had been replaced with “45 is a Puppet” in Spanish. At a glance though it looked roughly like the correct seal, and some intern who was told at the last minute that they forgot to put the Presidential seal on the projector could easily have made that mistake.
As fun as it is to think that a clever dissident chose the Lada as a prank it’s more likely that some twit who knows nothing about cars took the first free use image of an old car they could find.
Isn’t that the pedophile guy that was best friends with the guy that owned a pedophile island?
The MAGA-verse is now lecturing us about the difference between a pedophile and an ephebophile, because that doesn’t sound guilty as fuck.
At the heart of conservatism are two, somewhat overlapping propositions: That there should be an in-group the law protects but doesn’t bind, and an out-group the law binds but doesn’t protect; and that it’s somehow not really pedophilia if it’s man-on-girl.
There’s some really strong, “My ‘Not involved in sex trafficking’ shirt is raising a lot of questions already answered by my shirt.” – type energy coming from the Conservatives these days.
“I mean, I have an age—I don’t want to be like Congressman Foley, with, you know, 12-year-olds.”
Trump’s (probably) not a pedophile, he’s a pedophilephile.
And a dictatorophile. And also a dick-and-tater-ophile (sorry, I couldn’t resist the inner middle-schooler)
I like the rust spot next to his shoulder.
Making automobiles great again with a rust spot in the rear wheel area…. we dont want Russia steel thank you very much.
Yeah, why would we need Russian steel when our American steel rusts just as well!
They should have used another Soviet icon: The Trabant. Your body panels can’t rust if you make them out of old gulag uniforms and glue!
Trabant was East German, so not strictly Soviet.
True, it’s more of a Soviet-era icon.
When I heard about making cars great, the last thing I was expecting was a picture of a low-quality, unreliable piece of Russian propaganda machinery in front of that affordable yellow sedan.
Bah! That was going to be my joke! +1
Has there been a comment on Pravda Social, yet?
Could we get some bi-partisan agreement that who ever put this together deserves to be roasted to hell and back? They did a hilariously bad job on a seemingly simple assignment…
All of this is very dumb and I am very tired
1267 days left.
We didn’t learn the first time, you really think there’s an end?
OK, I’m gonna swerve in the other direction.
They did not want to show preference for a particular American car, so they used something no one would recognize. That said, they could have put the four major brands in together.
Right, because they wouldn’t want to show preference for one. Like shoot an actual car ad in front of the White House.
l’m going to stick with the lazy option.
Beat me to it…
I’m willing to blame incompetence over malevolence on this one…
Hanlon’s Razor.
Exactly.
I prefer to call it Heinlen’s Razor, since Hanlon seems to have cribbed it from him: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
quote from the Wikipedia article: A similar quotation appears in Robert A. Heinlein’s novella Logic of Empire (1941). The character Doc in the story describes the “devil theory” fallacy, explaining, “You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity.”
Stupid is as stupid does.
Could have had AI do a better job or use a picture of an old AMC? (not sure if there was any good ones?)
I wwas about to say, they could have prompted AI with American car, side view” or something like that and gotten a wretched but usable AI borkedmobile.
The thing about old AMCs is that they were built solid – those things could take a beating. My hypothesis is that they didn’t’t have the engineering staff to determine, say the optimal thickness of the frame rails and instead just put a safety factor of 5 on everything to make up for imperfections and smaller features that were tough to analyze.
Could’ve used a Forchevamchryswagon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-_6zX1rsAk
I like to think that there are a bunch of punks in the social media team who sneak in this kind of stuff to undermine the campaign.
…or for the lolz
I would have used a dead US brand. Something with tailfins to appeal to the boomers.
Then why not use an AMC?
Or they could have done what everyone else on social media seems to be doing right now and just thrown some AI-generated slop up there. I’m confident the target audience wouldn’t notice distorted wheels, multiple vanishing points, or other tells of an AI car pic.
As if they put that much thought into that. Or anything.
Not only a Lada, but a Lada with aftermarket wheels.
I don’t think the Soviet angle was an accident.
Modern cars are generally great, but they’re too goddamned expensive. Is this Big Beautiful Bullshit Bastard Bill going to address that?
Lastly…Truck Fump.
Are aftermarket wheels even legal in Russia?
(/Bad Russian accent)
“You go to gulag, comrade.”
I can’t believe there is such a ridiculous, abhorrent POS in the topshot.
The car is okay, though.
Either nobody else should like this and it should stay at 45 or exactly two more people should like it to bump it up to 47.
This is 100% on brand with the trump GOP. It’s all cheap, pulled-out-of-the-ass blathering.
It’s one of two things: 1. Either the people running the trump GOP are truly mentally ill (if you’ve ever had the experience of working with people with mental/emotional disorders, you’ll know what I mean – saying crazy things with absolute and utter conviction) and/or 2. they think so little of Americans that they will say and do the cheapest, laziest, insulting/trolling things and assume that there will be enough people who will swallow this swill to keep the con going, and if anyone ever actually wakes up to the truth/reality, so what – they believe that their followers are disposable, there’s another sucker standing in line.
Seems time and time again that going with option 2 has proven to be rather effective.
People are so lazy to even put any tiny bit of critical thinking so long as it aligns with how they feel and supports the narrative.
It has to be intentional. Even the stupidest intern would know to grab a picture of an old Corvette or Mustang or Caddy.
Now, what the intention is I don’t know. Is it a dogwhistle of support for the terrorist nation that makes the car? Or is it someone making Trump look stupid out of protest?
To bring out that nostalgic good-old-days feeling, they could have put a Chevy Vega or Citation in the background. Or a Chevette, or a Cutlass Diesel, or an AMC Pacer.
Yep, they shore don’t build ’em like they used to!
Yeah, if you google “old car”, a Lada doesn’t come anywhere near the top of the images. If you google, “old American car” or “American car” or almost anything that isn’t specifically calling for a Russian car, you’ll get almost anything but a Lada. It’s either trolling or telling the truth with the plausible stupidity excuse (this has happened before with the Russian flag and probably some other instances, so I don’t think it’s coincidental incompetence).
Do you remember the press conference at Four Seasons Total Landscaping? They really can be that dumb.
There’s a lot of discussion going on here but let’s all stay focused: Trump is a bad person doing bad things, and has bad people helping him do it. He’s doing more damage to more aspects of America than we can possibly imagine, and we’re arguing over his endless litany of distractions.
FIGHT THE FUCKER AT EVERY TURN
Trump: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help!”
Scared yet?
Governments don’t have to be shitty. That is one of the main lies that let people like Trump come to power.
By commenting on the internet?
Nah, I don’t need the stress.
I think we are being focused. Avoid the topic and focus on the cars.
The “Ignore it and it will go away” strategy has never worked with fascists, and it won’t this time.
But you won’t solve any of these things by commenting on it here. Which is the underlying assertion in the original post.
You want to go fight the good fight, fine whatever. But trying to turn every article about cars into your own personal crusade isn’t helping anyone. Time and place matters and this isn’t the place.
Also I will continue to ignore it for the next 3 1/2 years, give or take, and that will work for me.
The issue needs to be addressed everywhere it manifests. Will it be solved in the comment section here? No. But there was zero assertion in the OP that it would be. Trump is the topic of this article. You chose to read it; nobody made it their personal crusade. Any time Trump is involved, he should be called out for being a fascist pedo, (among many other awful things) so that it is clear to everyone that those things will not be ignored.
And that is the reason we are collectively living in a shit show. People choose comfortable ignorance over taking even a sliver of responsibility.
The issue does not need to be addressed here. It doesn’t. At all. Why? Because the site is trying to be inclusive and welcome all opinions.
The article (and the site in general) tends to maintain some neutrality because, and I know you’re going to find this hard to believe, not everyone agrees with you. They want to be welcoming even if you don’t.
The article goes out of its way to mention they try to not be political too much. And this particular event is funny! Not everything has to be an anti-Trump rallying cry. And this is not the place for it. Specifically because of how they are trying to create a neutral space.
If you have an undying need for everything in your life to be vehicle for validating your belief system and values, then I feel sorry for you. Because life isn’t all about one thing. And we can enjoy the cars without it always being about politics.
I understand fascists and pedo apologists exist. That is the core issue. Using “it is just an opinion” isn’t a defense for supporting a pedophile, rapist, or bigot who is undoubtedly pushing the country into authoritarianism. Yes, supporting that might be a person’s opinion, but judging them for it is 100% valid.
If those people aren’t comfortable being called out in public, they shouldn’t go out in public. The pubic would be much better for it. My friends and relatives wouldn’t need to worry about being harassed for their gender identity or the color of their skin (or disappeared by ICE) if all the MAGA shitbag bigots stayed in their basements.
Again, when complaining about people complaining about Trump on an article that has Trump in the headline is entirely idiotic. Maybe take a little responsibility for yourself and don’t comment on the comments you don’t like.
No, I’m complaining about you and all the anti-Trump-obsessionists constantly calling for everyone to make everything part of some War Against Trump®.
Everything I mention is in response to the original post calling for just this. It isn’t needed and isn’t part of this site, just as Jason points out in the opening paragraph.
If that’s your thing, I bet there are an endless number of sites you can visit where everyone will agree with you (I may even visit myself!) but when the authors of this site specifically call out they are avoiding politics and reporting the news of what is happening with some entertaining commentary, stop trying to turn it into your fight and your cause.
Go make your own space for your fight and leave this one to those that think we can actually go about our lives with some joy even with what is happening.
There is no reason to keep this up. To everyone here that wants to call out the authors on not being antagonistic enough just to validate your views, just stop and go somewhere that does that and stop trying to turn everything in your life into your cause.
So you agree, you were complaining about somebody complaining.
If you can’t deal with a complex and messy world and need space where reality can’t creep in, I suggest you don’t go online or outside.
Or at least follow your own advice and don’t engage with it in the comments. Nobody is forcing you to read and respond. Take some responsibility for yourself.
Just take it somewhere else man. It is stated no one wants all this mess. I am not complaining about others complaining. I am complaining about the act of trying to hijack a site for your cause and trying to insist that somehow those that run this site should be fighting your cause. I’m terribly sorry if the nuance is lost on you.
If the authors and editors and management are attempting to create a space to discuss the world of cars outside of all this, why are you so insistent that they take up your antagonistic attitude and tone when it would be detrimental to their business to do so?
I likely agree with you on many points. I occasionally make them myself but to suggest (every damn time) that The Autopian is somehow obligated to use your tone to call out every act of malice and injustice in a way that is “fighting the fucker at every turn” is just ludicrous.
We’re all here to talk about cars and car things. Occasionally (often) politics affect that world. It is actually possible to discuss these things without all the “burn the fucker down” attitude and certainly without the constant suggestion that if you’re not trying to violently overthrow the administration you’re somehow complicit in the atrocities.
Good lord, have your medications checked for gods’ sake.
Where did I say anything about what the Autopian was obligated to say? You are the one who couldn’t scroll past a comment that upset you. To get what you want, all you need to do is take a little responsibility for what you read and how you engage.
The general state of antagonism across all of society is not due to any fault of those that you deride. It is the result of being in a situation where a narcissistic sociopathic pedophile rapist and bigot is in charge of the country and doing everything he can to implement an authoritarian regime. The current reaction is, if anything, much milder than it should be.
If you can’t handle the way it impacts your safety bubble, at least have the decency to point your finger at the actual problem rather than those who are honest enough to do so and call it what it is. Because your desire to ignore it is, without any doubt, a part of the problem. Eventually, the leopard will get to your face as well.
You always do this. You jump into a comment I made to another person and ask, “where did I say…”
I already said, the all of the points I was making are in the context of the original comment. The article tries to avoid politics. Commenter says, no we should fight the fucker at every turn. I respond asking how commenting on the internet does this and suggest maybe we don’t need that.
You want to jump in and say the comment section should be a free for all and make every goddamn issue about how Trump is destroying everything.
I say no. I would actually welcome content moderation at this point even if I was edited myself. Perhaps I am upset. Maybe I’m tired. You lot are exhausting and honestly do a disservice to your cause. But that’s fine.
As you rightly point out, I could have avoided it rather easily. But I didn’t.
So go right ahead. Keep fighting the good fight against tyranny and oppression. On the internet. In the comments section of a car blog. Where the war will surely be won. Fight the power. Jesus.
Trump IS destroying everything, including the ability for there to be spaces free of that destruction. Do something useful with your frustration rather than getting mad at the people who are honest enough to be mad at the right thing.
I never said that the comment section should be a free-for-all. I have had my life threatened here, and that threat was rightfully moderated. The people who run this site have chosen what to allow and make posts such as this, fully aware of how it will interact with the moderation they provided. I respect them enough to allow them to make their choice in the matter.
You are the one who expects others to provide you a space on your terms rather than simply engaging in the areas that suit you.
BTW, note how I never engaged in personal insults—something you can’t say.
Par for the course from the out of touch
teamcult that doesn’t understand the music they play at rallies and booked a landscaping company for a press conference.How in the holy fuck did we put people this fucking stupid in charge? The fuck!?!
We (the rest of the galaxy, except Russians) wonder the same thing. With horror.
Plenty of horror here too.
There are a shockingly large number of stupid, blustering cowards in the US and far too many apathetic confederates.
The greatest irony of all of this is that American cars are already the best they have been in 50 years. The 70’s were full of horrendous malaise, 80’s and 90’s are most remembered as the period when the Japanese manufacturers ate up the lions share of the market, the 00’s had some good cars and a lot of regrettable ones, and the 10’s to now were the rise and reemergence of the American automakers back to a position of good standing.
Now, Stellantis is a mess, and Ford has some quality issues, but there are very few bad products on sale by US based Automakers. Even the new Trax is a respectable enough car, long gone are the days of the Celebrity and rebadged Mitsubishis. The typical MAGA posturing continues to be wholly ridiculous and ignores the entirety of reality, harkening back to “the good old days” where life was, statistically, far worse than the rose tinted glasses would have you believe. All this while the administration actively antagonizes allies and devalues decades of goodwill and soft power.
Gotta go back further. I want a new Duesenberg SSJ!
True, it would have been funny enough just to have “make automobiles great again” and an image of any American car built in the 70s.
Or the movie poster for “Gung Ho”.
This. American car companies are making cars with over 1000 HP. Silverados and F-150s have never been better. US manufacturing is making a ton of Toyotas, Hondas, BMWs, Mercedes, Hyundai’s…
It has never been better. Not close.
If USA automakers built lightweight, aerodynamically-efficient, inexpensive, mechanically-robust, technologically-simple, easily repairable cars with a similar design philosophy behind the Ladas that use interchangeable parts between manufacturers, they’d have the best cars on Earth.
Have them come in multiple powertrain options: ICE, diesel, pure-EV, PHEV, all on the same platforms, so the consumer can choose what is best for them. Consider Casey Putsch’s Omega Car that does 100+ mpg at 70 mph and 0-60 mph around 4 seconds with a 1.9L TDI engine as a baseline for what is possible. An EV version of the same would be a 0.130 kWh/mile car on the highway and not need a huge battery.
I don’t think that’s what Trump is advocating for though. But if he was, it would make so much sense.
Let’s call the Omega what it is. It’s a homebuilt kit/one-off car that does not comply with FMVSS, has a tuned diesel engine that wouldn’t meet modern emissions regulations in stock form, very much les sin it’s current state of tune, is (I’m sorry to say this) not attractive enough to be actually sellable to the public, lacks a lot of what consumers actually want, and again, is a hand built one-off. Not to mention diesel is a long-dead avenue in the US for commuter cars. Sure it’s impressive for what it is, but lets stop pretending that one-offs not beholden to a single federal standard are worth anything when it comes to production vehicles. Not to mention due to it’s diminutive size, retrofitting an EV drivetrain would be highly non-trivial.
It’s a proof of concept. He never presented it as anything else.
FMVSS-compliant cars could be a lot more like it than they currently are, reaping most of its benefits vs the current baseline. In Trumpian fashion, regulations could be reduced if he really wanted to make this possible. The upper wealthiest 20% of the public drives current car sales because no one else can afford any of the offerings available, but that would change with cheaper offerings that held the sort of appeal the Omega car offers(who wouldn’t want a $20k car that accelerates like a $100k car?). Attractiveness is highly subjective, and there are plenty of complaints about modern cars being ugly and compliments on the Omega car’s aesthetics in comments on videos showcasing it. I fit an EV drivetrain into a Triumph GT6, and you don’t need a whole lot of motor or batteries to make it go fast or far, and the Omega appears to have more room to fit things and even better overall aerodynamics. No one with the means has ever tried to mass produce anything like it, so such a thing has never been given a chance in the market to begin with.
Overall, it’s still a good design, and its overall qualities could still translate into a mass market product if only someone would try it for a change. All that has to be done is throw the private equity firms that don’t want such disruption to have a chance straight under the bus, and good riddance.
You know, this makes me wonder how much anti-EV hate is (ironically) driven by the legacy automakers themselves. If you think about what qualities drive the high-margin luxury car market in an ICE-powered world; comfort, smoothness, power, etc., you quickly realize that all of those are easily met in relatively cheap EVs. In such a world, aside from badge envy, what is there to really differentiate the luxury brands from the rest of the consumer market?
American manufacturers have always distinguished their upmarket offerings by features, not quality. The luxury comes from more power bits, more leather/velour on more panels, and more space. The last “traditional” American sedan was the Panther body, and you could see that going through it – the Town Car was just a Crown Vic with more sound deadening, different upholstery and maybe a telephone in the center console. The engine isn’t any quieter, smoother or more powerful, except the possible inclusion of a different muffler. In even older cars, when development budgets had a bit more slack, they might have punched up displacement and stretched the wheelbase.
You can still compare a Sierra Tax-Evasion-Edition to a Silverado U-Haul-Edition, or an Escalade V to a base Suburban, and you see the very same phenomena: Luxury cars are just family cars with more stuff, no fundamental change. You can take that one of 2 ways: Either our entry-level cars are so phenomenal and excessive that all it takes to make them luxury cars is some velour-wrapped power seats, or our luxury cars are gussied-up shitboxes.
This. So much this.
A proof of concept is great and all, but it doesn’t really have much of an analogue to the real world. The closest analogue to the Omega car that was actually ever built was the XL1, which as we know could do around 200 mpg (varies, PHEV helped fudge the Euro rating to around 260mpge) and was a 100k car with acceleration of a 20k car. yes it was low production hence some of the cost, and it’s economy was greater than that of the Omega. But to say that something like the Omega could simply be willed into existence and would hit a magic list of superlatives, even with 10 years of technological developments and be 1/5th the cost and 5x the performance (relatively) is naïve.
Oh Torch, we know you know what they are referring to. Making something “great” means removing pesky regulations that will allow automakers to make these old, dangerous cars again since there will be no safety features, or nannies. There will be telematics, though, because cha-ching.
Just returned from a visit to South Dakota; folks there are already switching from traditional cars & trucks to side-by sides and ATVs for their daily drivers. Now, these are getting more expensive, but still are much lower cost than the average Ford/Chevy/Dodge/Nissan etc.
This is a growing trend, at least where laws are lax.
There are maybe 100 people in the entire state of South Dakota, though, so I’m not sure that counts as a general trend.
That’s NORTH Dakota. South Dakota has almost 10,000.
That’s 9997 more than Wyoming!
Vermont and Alaska demand recognition.
I think that gets us to all the states with smaller populations than Jacksonville FL.