When Jalopnik author Collin Woodard dropped this tweet from the official GOP account into Slack, I needed to double test and triple test to see if it was a joke, however nope — that actually is an image of President Trump, doing his favourite bizarre dance that appears like a child who has simply found his fingers, in entrance of a Lada. And never even a comparatively new Lada both, because it seems to be a VAZ-2101, one of many earliest fashions of the automotive produced within the Seventies and ’80s. What the hell?
The meme type picture bears the watermark of The Each day Sign, a critical conservative information web site that clearly doesn’t have an automotive or satirical part, besides, this isn’t a retweet from a probably smarmy website. It is a full blown publish by the official GOP account, a tweet that proudly proclaims “The One Large Lovely invoice will drive the return of the nice American automotive.”
The One Large Lovely invoice will drive the return of the nice American automotive.
🇺🇸🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/poAsG8pDKg— GOP (@GOP) July 31, 2025
That roof line, these wheel arches — pure Lada, comrade. Ladas are, most notably, not American-made vehicles. Till just lately, Lada’s dwelling was in Tolyatti, Russia, on the Volga River. That was earlier than sanctions in opposition to Russia because of the invasion of Ukraine pressured the corporate to pause manufacturing. Renault had a controlling stake in Avtovaz, the mum or dad firm of Lada, however pulled out that very same yr, CNN experiences. The corporate was based as a state-run automotive firm (as virtually the entire corporations within the USSR have been) and principally constructed rebadged Fiat 124s that would survive the brutal Russian climate.
The best automotive, on the proper time, on the proper value
It is such a ridiculous and albeit stunning mistake to make. There may be such a wealth of American vehicles, each from the previous–if that is what you need on your message concerning the future for some motive–and from the current, which might make a hell of much more sense. Heck, you might have put a Tesla again there and repaid your greatest frenemy’s many beneficiant donations to the profitable GOP candidate’s marketing campaign with just a little extra free publicity. God is aware of Tesla may actually use the assistance proper now, as gross sales have slumped ever since CEO Elon Musk dipped his toes into the swamp of Washington D.C.
However at the same time as a mistake, utilizing this Lada picture is unnecessary. It even appears like a crappy outdated automotive. The civilian, non-car particular person would possibly see a Chrysler Okay-Automotive in these boxy and uninspiring proportions, however that can also be unhealthy on your model. Why would you choose not simply an outdated, however proudly economical car? The imaginative and prescient of the way forward for the auto trade this tweet is promoting strikes me as fairly grim, even apart from the truth that is an outdated Soviet-made automotive within the background. Perhaps it made it on as a result of the automotive is yellow, and a few 20-year-old social media supervisor thought yellow means it’s a cool automotive. Actually sloppy work.
The Lada is healthier identified lately for taking a monumental quantity of abuse and persevering with on their merry means. From our personal Lada mission automotive to Storage 54, a YouTube channel which has welded a Lada to a different Lada, given a Lada legs and powered one with simply 50 cordless drills amongst different issues, Ladas have endurance. Perhaps that is what the GOP wished to convey: an automotive trade as unstoppable as a Soviet made automotive.
