This sad and instructive story happened to my father and his two friends at the time of their dawn of the middle-aged crisis. Well, let's start with the order.
We all know that the decommissioned cars from government agencies should be sold at auction, but, as a rule, they are bought by direct employees of the same institutions, and at a tiny (estimated) price.
I won't go into details of the deal, so as not to cause a lot of complaints and accusations, just stating the fact that once my dad and his two buddies had written off UAZs, completely killed, through rusty with engines, almost nailed fixed. They were ruthlessly written off for recycling, which means that it was simply unrealistic to register them through the traffic police.
I will not say that they were not tried to reanimate them, but judge for yourself, the car required major repairs of the engine, in one from the old one remained only a block of cylinders, to replace the gearbox, front cardan, of course, steering and braking system, I am not talking about springs, axles, appliances and electrical equipment. Plus, or rather a huge minus global corrosion of the body.
Certainly, it became clear that the cost of their repair and modernization would significantly exceed the amount of the initial purchase. Realizing that these cars are definitely not luxury, but luxury - these are the necessary spare parts for them, the men decided to arrange a drive-test for wreckage while they could still drive. I don't know if it's worth mentioning, but this decision came to them in a completely relaxed conversation at one of the joint feasts, I don't remember what the initiates.
We live in the suburbs, and our village is surrounded by vast fields, occasionally interrupted by beams or ravines. So immediately they saddled their trophies, they slightly omitted, started up and rushed away from the village. I was given approximate coordinates of the meeting, loaded into the trunk of Moskvich Izh-Combie all sorts of freely moving tools and towing rope and ordered to follow them at a safe distance.
What I saw when I reached my destination left a bright trace in my memory and slightly changed the way adult men behaved. I was confronted with a succession of real action scenes. Men, as true stuntmen, tested the product of the domestic car industry for endurance. I don't remember which one of them got the brilliant idea to play jalopy, but the rest of them developed the idea with genuine enthusiasm and started to implement it in life.
They were playing tags - chases, and I felt like my hair stood on the back of such an exciting and frightening spectacle at the same time, the longer the game continued, the clearer I realized that today I will bring home only daredevils, and their car will definitely be scraped. With every second, UAZs turned into tin boxes of chaotic, undefined shape. I wouldn't say anything about minor injuries, abrasions and bruises. The game ended at the moment when one of the UAZs, during the unsuccessful maneuver of the driver, flew into the ditch.
Thank God, there were no casualties or injuries. But looking at these games, I understood the breadth of the Russian soul, in the bark almost incredibly intertwined completely incompatible qualities. And I remembered the ancient byliny and legends about the indomitable, wild, crazy, good boyfriend removed.
But especially the given event has served for me as the strong proof of immortality of two classical troubles of Russia.