Alexander Dybin, St. Petersburg
The owner of a car service, Yevgeny Golub from Luga, was supposed to become a military man. He graduated from the cadet corps in St. Petersburg and the Ryazan Automobile Institute. But he became an entrepreneur.
“All my friends are there, in the Special military operation zone”, - he says, “it happened so that I ended up here. But we can help here too. Already on March 5, I was in Belgorod with the first cargo of humanitarian aid, which was collected by activists and caring residents of Luga. Already sent 12 convoys. We constantly communicate with the leadership of our brigades, which were previously deployed in Luga, and are now located there. From them, a request was received for pickups: fast and maneuverable cars".
The activists assembled the first car transporter in a week. They searched for ads, they needed Niva with live engines and a strong suspension so that the bridges would not be torn off on impassable roads. The rest for those conditions is not important.
“We looked at foreign cars in the back of a pickup truck, but more or less decent ones start at 700 thousand, it’s expensive, plus they are not repairable in the field”, - says Yevgeny Golub, “so we settled on Niva”. You can buy a suitable car for 100-150 thousand. Another 15-20 thousand is spent on replacing consumables, threatened spare parts that can fail.
The technology for turning a standard three-door Niva into a pickup truck is simple. All unnecessary is cut off and a stiffening frame is welded so that the machine does not fold in half from the load.
“We didn’t find any drawings, but we looked at the photos and videos that were made before us,” Golub says, “numerous Kulibins have experimented with the Niva more than once, and in general, it was clear what to do. They took a long time with the first, but now they have perfected the technology so that the Niva turns from an ordinary car into a pickup truck in a day, including painting in khaki color.
Why are pickups needed in the NWO zone? In modern warfare, this type of car turned out to be very popular. Suffice it to recall the so-called "jihad-mobiles", known for the conflicts in the Middle East.
“We didn't come up with any name for our cars”, - says Yevgeny Golub, “journalists called it a tachanka – we can probably agree with this term. There is already experience in their use, there are requests to finalize the design, add a footrest. But in general, the cars are very happy, light, maneuverable, passable. Even on military vehicles it is difficult to move around in muddy conditions, but on these you can drive around through the bushes, through the forest, and it’s not so visible. We mount a special platform for the installation of the necessary equipment. Most often these are anti-tank missiles. He fired and quickly ran away, not waiting for him to fly in from there.
According to Yevgeny Golub, information about the preparation of vehicles for the front had an unusual effect. Now they are calling him from all over the area and offering to pick up cars for free. For example, the head of the collective farm drove the UAZ "Bukhanka", which had been driving on collective farm affairs in the morning. LuAZ, a small military off-road vehicle that has not been produced for many years, aroused a separate interest of the craftsmen. LuAZ with wheels from "Mercedes" is now being put in order, they are trying to fit parts from "Zhiguli".
“LuAZ was just being developed as a vehicle for the military”, - Golub says, “it was handed over to us by a military pensioner, who drove it to the forest for hunting and fishing. He loved the car very much, he even called it "Luntik". He told us that he served in Donetsk for 10 years and believes that his car is more needed there”.