Wagonlog

Car and the City

  • New Turbo revival, episode 1

    This hobby started in 2016 and slowly run for three series of self made very simple analogue of Kent’s Turbo gum inserts. Since wagonlog was in stasis for 4-5 years I moved it to my blog and it is still in progress (Currently on number 131). No one asked to repeat all these staff in English but I do.

    The first wave, 1-50 (2016-2018).

    It was just introduction with small note about Turbo series itself:

    Turbo was a chewing gum, the first releases (presumably before 1985) with peach flavor, subsequent releases were with fruit flavor and aroma — produced by the Turkish company “Kent Gida”, containing inserts with photographs, usually of cars or motorcycles. It was extremely popular among children and teenagers of the late USSR, Russia, CIS countries and Poland in the late 1980s – early 1990s.
    Not a small piece of information about brilliant 1957 Mercedes Benz 220s on picture.


    Short info about this classic:

    The Citro?n SM is a very unusual car and it honored in 1971 with third place in the European Car of the Year competition, and next year in 1972 it received the title of Car of the Year in the USA according to Motor Trend magazine, which was an unprecedented achievement for a non-American car at that time. The SM was produced from 1970 to 1975 and was a prestigious and expensive coupe (or rather, a three-door hatchback stylized as a coupe), combining technical characteristics close to the level of Gran Turismo, with the comfort of a luxury car. In 1968, Citro?n bought out Maserati along with its engine developments and from a technical point of view, the SM was a combination of a very advanced front-wheel drive platform for that time with a “branded” hydropneumatics suspension created on the basis of Citro?n DS units and a high-potential V6 engine developed by Maserati with a volume of 2.7 or 3.0 liters, including a version with fuel injection.

    And so on..

    The third number with 2017 Lincoln Continental, the last 10th generation of iconic American series. On that moment I did not realized that Ford Motors cancel the Continentals after 2020 as well as most sedans switching to trucks and SUVs. So in 2016 I mentioned nothing about car itself but pointed out again Turbo hobby concept:

    There are actually quite a lot of people nostalgic for the famous Eastern European Turbo chewing gum inserts from the 20th century. They still collect, exchange, discuss, sell and buy pictures of cars. The rarest numbers of the first series on Ebay cost some fabulous money, and the preserved (and apparently slightly dried) chewing gums are even more expensive. Subsequently, many copies and imitations were released, which can even now be found in retail, but they certainly will not repeat the success of the legendary products of the Turkish company Kent. The pictures that are published here will not come across you in gum or anywhere else. This is just the author’s hobby.

    Very brief information about the car named after the founder of Ferrari:

    The nostalgic series of designer inserts in Turbo continues. Today the legendary Ferrari Enzo

    The car was produced from 2002 to 2004. The model was built in honor of the company’s founder – Enzo Ferrari. A total of 400 cars were produced.

    The first wave started a little boring I know

    This exact car interesting for Soviet people of 80s who could see it in famous TV show (miniseries). 1971 Pontiac Grand Ville was filmed in the 5 episode TV show called “The Mirage” (Mir??a) adaptation of James Hadley Chase “The World in My Pocket” by Latvia’s Riga Film Studio in 1983.
    This Pontiac was restored and was driven around Latvia at least in 2017. IMCDB link.
    BTW later some other movies and TV cars will be presented in this series.

    To be continued..

  • Number of cars produced in Azerbaijan in the Q1 2025

    Sorry no brands, plants, type of cars and other details provided by the State Statistics Committee. All we know is count and split by type of vehicles.

    In January-March 2025, 1,302 passenger cars and 28 trucks were produced in Azerbaijan.

    Compared to the corresponding period of the previous year, the production of passenger cars increased by 2.1 times, while the production of trucks decreased by 86%

    As of April 1 of the current year, the stock of finished products was 134 passenger cars and 15 trucks, respectively.

    During the reporting period, 124 tractors were produced in the country, which is 25.3% less compared to the corresponding period of the previous year.

    Recall that last year 5,998 passenger cars and 697 trucks were produced in the country.

  • Azerbaijan Auto Market 2025

    I came across an interesting post on Reddit. Some statements there are controversial, but overall the trends are described well. I used to follow the market through the eyes of BestSellingCars, the information on which was taken from an unclear place. Someone privately provided it to Matt, having access to some inside information on dealers. It reflects only sales of new cars, which are inferior to the import of used cars (at least they used to be inferior). I also got information from fragmentary data from the State Statistics Committee.

    Then I abandoned this idea, even though I have slightly more data, coming into contact with the largest platform for ads for the sale of cars. The latest data on BestSellingCars, by the way, is also for 2022.
    It seems obvious to me that Chinese brands dominate among new cars now, the import of used cars from Korea has grown a lot. The State Customs Committee reports on figures, but not on brands and models, without even specifying where the vehicles are imported from:

    Azerbaijan imported 16,758 vehicles in January-February 2025, which is 26% more than in the same period last year. The total value of vehicles imported into the country was $288,940,130 (an increase of 16.7%). The average price of a car was $17,251
    The largest number of vehicles were passenger cars and other motor vehicles for the carriage of passengers – 15,309 thousand units (an increase of 27.3%) with a total value of almost $256 million (an increase of 17.6%). Average price of a car is $16,717
    Of passenger cars, in particular, 7,577 thousand hybrid cars were imported during the reporting period (an increase of 2.9 times) for the amount of 146 million US dollars (an increase of 1.8 times). Average price of a car is $19,303
    In addition, over 2 months, the number of imported electric cars amounted to 309 units (a decrease of 42.9%) for the amount of 12,839,900 US dollars (a decrease of 1.9 times). Average price of a car is $41,553

    Turbo.az shares information about the most popular car dealerships operating on their site, as well as official dealers. This is not about sales, but about ad views, but it is still very interesting (data for 3 months of 2025):

    Самые продаваемые автомобили в Азербайджане в 2019

  • Pre-Owned Tesla Prices Tumble as Trade-Ins Climb To All-Time High

    • In the year to March 31, the average price of a used Tesla fell 7.03% in the U.S. and 17.3% in the U.K., industry data suggests.
    • The falling prices reflect higher-than-ever trade-in rates.
    • Demand for new Teslas is also weak and could get worse if tariffs induce significant price increases.

    As a glut of traded-in vehicles hit the market, prices for pre-owned Teslas have dropped in the U.K. and U.S.

    The price drop further complicates Tesla’s business prospects as the firm faces plummeting global sales and supply chain uncertainty amid an escalating trade war.

    Used Tesla Prices Fall Faster Than Other Brands

    According to data from CarGurus, the average price for a second-hand Tesla in the U.S. fell from $31,590 on March 31, 2024, to $29,370 a year later

    The 7.03% decline is much steeper than the 2.72% average observed across brands and models.

    Cybertrucks faced the most severe price drop of more than 54% year-over-year.

    Despite Elon musk’s prediction that Tesla would sell 250,000 Cybertrucks per year, the company has sold just 46,000 since they hit the market in 2023.

    Tesla in the U.K.

    The decline was even more pronounced in the U.K., where the average price of a second-hand Tesla fell 17.3% from ?26,895 to ?22,213.

    As Tesla doesn’t sell Cybertrucks outside of North America, the model with the steepest price decline in the U.K. was the Model Y, which saw an average price reduction of 22.55%.

    Overall, pre-owned vehicle prices fell a little over 4% in the country, CarGuru data reveals.

    When it comes to new Teslas, the U.K. has bucked the wider European trend for declining sales. Yet the increase is down to an uptick in electric vehicle (EV) sales across the board.

    Looking at all EVs sold in the country, Tesla has actually lost market share.

    Tariffs To Impact New Tesla Prices


    While the cost of used Teslas has fallen, new vehicles are expected to rise in price once the full impact of recent U.S. tariffs is factored in.

    Like most automakers, Tesla relies on international supply chains that will incur significant new taxes under Donald Trump’s latest tariff regime.

    An analysis by Barron’s estimates that new import duties will cause the average cost of a Tesla made in the U.S. to rise by $4,000, or 11%.

    The looming price hike comes at a bad time for Tesla, which has suffered a dramatic drop in sales as more buyers boycott the company over CEO Elon Musk’s politics.

    In the first quarter of 2025, Tesla sold just 336,681 units, its worst performance since 2023 and nearly 80,000 fewer EV than rival BYD

    Between the growing boycott movement and weaker demand for EVs generally, the firm has lost market share in almost every market.

    Source: https://www.ccn.com/news/business/pre-owned-tesla-prices-tumble/

  • This Company Made Your iPhone. Now, It Wants To Make Your EV

    Electronics giant Foxconn wants to sell EVs in America. It may even partner with Nissan, Honda or Mitsubishi to pull it off.


    Contract electronics manufacturer Foxconn already builds 40% of the world’s consumer electronics, including things like the Apple iPhone and Microsoft Xbox.
    Now, it wants to get into the EV game, with a host of software-defined electric cars planned for launch.
    The company is aggressively pursuing partnerships with companies like Honda, Mitsubishi and Nissan to make its plan work.
    If you’ve heard of Foxconn, it’s probably because of the iPhone. Officially known as Hon Hai Technology Group, the Taiwan-based firm is the world’s largest electronics manufacturer, building everything from Apple’s ubiquitous smartphone to Amazon Kindles and Nintendo Switches. Now, it wants to sell you an electric vehicle.

    We already knew the company was eyeing an EV play, Foxconn has wanted to do that for years now. But at a recent press conference with automakers attended by Automotive News, the brand laid out its vision for a full line of EVs, with some sold in the U.S. Production will start in Taiwan, but the goal is to eventually set up U.S. manufacturing, Foxconn executive Jun Seki told the group.

    Local production will be important. Though headquartered in Taiwan, Foxconn is best known for its giant manufacturing footprint in mainland China. While Taiwan receives support from the U.S. and is closely linked to it economically, Washington and other governments have tried to choke the spread of Chinese EVs into the global market.

    Products will include a midsize crossover, a compact crossover, two vans and a midsize sedan. The crossovers are slated to come to the U.S. A key part of Foxconn’s plan will be working with partners as a contract manufacturer, as it does in the electronics business. But Foxconn here seems set to design and build the products, then offer them as pre-made, ready-to-sell vehicles for interested manufacturers.

    Currently, one brand is at the top of its list. Foxconn has been pursuing Nissan aggressively. Though it does not plan to acquire the company, it sees the brand as a key part of its push into the automotive space. Nikkei has also reported that Foxconn is trying to win Honda’s business, while Seki confirmed it is already working with Mitsubishi. The company offered no specifics on what that partnership looks like.

    Links:
    https://www.autonews.com/nissan/an-foxconn-ev-america-launch-nissan-partners-hon-hai-0409/
    https://insideevs.com/news/756115/foxconn-ev-plan-nissan-honda/

  • Guilty pleasure and Turbo

    Among my strange hobbies, there is one brought from my childhood that haunts me obsessively. I can’t even call it purely nostalgic. As the mass of nostalgic affairs after some memories dissipate – an indulgent smile, a slight sadness, some associative rows. But with Turbo it is somehow different for me.

    But first I have to tell very young readers what Turbo is. If your first association with this word is with Turkish chewing gum and pictures with cars, you can skip this paragraph. So, in 80’s – 90’s, Turkish Kent company produced different chewing gums along with other food products and it coincided in some strange way with the shortage and the resulting greedy-guts behavior in the socialist camp countries. That’s why one of the series of chewing gums with automobile inserts (wrappers) got to all sorts of Bulgaria, Romania, Poland and the former USSR and became not only popular, but also surpassed the popularity in the homeland. However, in Turkey too there is nostalgia for Turbo and references to this brand will definitely be found in all kinds of digests, such as “top 100 nostalgic things from childhood”. Gum was first brought by “speculators” (early form of self-employment in USSR) and semi-legally in all sorts of retail outlets (for example, I remember a table near the department store in Baku). And quite expensive. However, I will stop price disputes here at once, because it is a very controversial and debatable topic and it is not correct to compare the price of bread and milk of that time and today with imported, not always legal goods. But for sure the margins of gummies were quite high.

    Later Turbo and dozens of other chewing gums, mostly Turkish from Kent, Ulker, Bifa, Dandy, Baycan, etc., flooded into “commercial” stores, stalls, tents. Here are some names from those years that you might remember too – Lazer, Final, Bombibom, CinCin, Minti, ??psevdi (aka Love is…), OtoMoto. I, like almost everyone else, was a fan of Turbo and twice collected liners (the first collection was stolen in my school), but the years went by, adulthood, foreign cars began to drive on our roads, gum became quite cheap and cars were not so attractive anymore.

    But in adulthood I became interested in Turbo again, and thanks to the Internet not only saw all the missing pictures, including the legendary first series 1-50, which did not come to our country, but also read a lot of interesting things on the subject. Fortunately my hobby remained rather passive – I didn’t start collecting pictures again, buying rare unopened gum at auctions, etc. My nostalgia is limited to posting on my blog photoshopped cars that I find interesting, sometimes accompanied by historical comments. Some of them could never be portraited on original Turbo even if they were quite old, some were and linked to the pictures of Turkish wrappers.

    Wandering around the internet you can realize that there are a lot of people passionate about Turbo, but as I think everyone has their own references and passions for this media fetish, not like me.

  • New Turbo Collection

    Wagonlog rested a bit. Meanwhile the whole “Guilty pleasure” hobby of making own nostalgic pictures replaced to La Vida Bloga and moved forward. But here I would like to restore it and translate/adapt all those cute and ugly stories. Not images:)

    [Show as slideshow]
    1 2 … 4

  • New Car Logos Collection

    Collected here brands that recently changes their logo.

    Mazda

    Peugeot

    Gm

    Volvo

    Nissan

    Audi (2016)

    Audi (2024) for EV cars

    Renault

    Vauxhall

    Toyota

    Mini

    During merge of PSA and FCA was created a new brand Stellantis:

    Fiat

    Lotus

    Seat changed its logo and also created brand Cupra

    Rolls Royce did not just change the logo but totally reviewed its brand identic including iconic Spirit of Ecstasy

    Citro?n

    Cadillac

    Buick

    ?koda

    Bugatti


    Dacia

    Genesis

    Honda

    Infiniti

    Jaguar (2021-2024)

    Jaguar (2024-now)

    Jaguar Land Rover

    Lancia

    Mack

    Maserati

    Opel

    Porsche

    See also:

    Kia представила новый логотип
    Новый логотип BMW
    Новый логотип Volkswagen

  • Wagonlog 2025

    Вялая посещаемость и как следствие активность на проекте Wagonlog привела к его полной консервации. Весь контент переехал на punkito.com в 2021, а тут все было жестоко запущено – все настолько устарело, что практически не запускалось и пришлось повозиться. Думаю попробовать сделать рефакторинг, не сколько для блога как такового, а чтобы потренироваться. И милый олдскульный дизайн сменить.
    По поводу собственно содержания, частенько хочется поговорить про машины, автомобильные рынки, технологии и тд. Может быть буду делать это здесь, но не факт.
    And you know, it would be great if it would be in English.

  • Kia представила новый логотип

    Компания Kia представила свой новый логотип и глобальный девиз марки, с которых начинается «трансформация бренда и стремление к новым глобальным целям цели».

    Новый логотип Kia отражает приверженность компании идее стать олицетворением перемен и инноваций, — заявил президент и генеральный директор Kia Сон Хо Сун — автомобильная индустрия переживает эпоху быстрой трансформации, и Kia стремится быть в авангарде изменений, адаптируясь к этим переменам. Новый логотип символизирует наше желание вдохновлять клиентов, а наших сотрудников — справляться с теми вызовами, которые ставит перед нами быстро меняющаяся отрасль

    О том, что Kia готовится к смене логотипа, стало известно еще в 2019, когда компания зарегистрировала в южнокорейском патентном офисе новую эмблему. Она представляет собой соединенные буквы, которые могут быть выполнены в черном или белом цвете. Символы с похожей стилистикой компания также использовала на электрическом концепт-каре Imagined by Kia, представленном в марте 2019 года на Женевском автосалоне.

    Что касается слогана, то вместо нынешнего «Сила удивлять» (The Power to Surprise) корейцы будут использовать «Движение, которое вдохновляет» (Movement that inspires).

    Обновление логотипа Kia стало продолжением реализации долгосрочной стратегии развития компании Plan S, представленной корейцам в 2020 году. В рамках новой стратегии Kia намерена войти в число лидеров глобальных автопроизводителей по объему выпуска, а также усилить свои позиции в сегменте электромобилей. К 2027 году компания планирует представить еще семь электромобилей. После чего число полностью электрических моделей в линейке марки достигнет десяти.

    Новый логотип BMW
    Новый логотип Volkswagen

  • Новые Turbo, номер 78

    Какая же серия Turbo без легендарного 190-го? Ведь расцвет серии первых серий от Kent совпадает с безумной популярностью этого Mercedes.

    Вот образцы из оригинальных серий. Вторая по стилю похожа на нашу новую.

    Первая волна

    01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 08, 09, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50

    Вторая волна

    51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77

  • Самые продаваемые автомобили в Азербайджане в 2019

    Как и в прошлом году источником данных о продажах новых автомобилей послужил блог BestSellingCars. 2019 год может из нашего времени показаться довольно успешным, поскольку в этому году ряд событий конечно внесет коррективы во все сферы нашей жизни.
    Итак в 2019 году продажи новых машин выросли на 14,5% в годовом исчислении до 10,608 единиц (9,262 автомобилей в 2018). Полностью изменились рейтинги и брендов и моделей. Запущенный в 2018 года бренд Khazar более чем вдвое увеличил свои продажи и занял лидирующую позицию в рейтинге брендов с долей 15,3%. Khazar также производит иранские Peugeot 406, которые добавляет еще 2,1%, а общая доля Khazar составляет 17,4%.

    Российская Lada поднялась на второе место, прибавив 30% в продажах, благодаря отличным продажам Granta (+25%) и Vesta (+80%), ну и конечно бестселлеру Niva (Lada 4×4). Рыночная доля в продажах Lada достигла 13,3%. Лидер прошлого года Hyundai потерял 42,2% и сместился на третье место. Четвертое и пятое место занимают также упавшие Toyota (-48,2%) и Kia (-20,5%). А вот Renault благодаря росту количества такси и бюджетных автомобилей (в частности Logan) на этом рынке смогла значительно прибавить (+216,4%) и занять шестую строчку. Замыкают десятку Nissan (+56,4%), Volkswagen (+31,6%), Skoda, GAC.

    Теперь по моделям. Лидером предсказуемо стал Khazar LD/SD. Автор блога Matt Gasnier посещавший Азербайджан в 2019 отмечает, что этих Хазаров на дорогах нашей страны (в частности в Баку) довольно много.
    На втором месте по прежнему хит продаж – Нива или официально Lada 4х4, далее идут прошлогодний лидер Hyundai Accent, Toyota RAV4 и Kia Rio.

    Также отмечается, что в ранний период пандемии COVID-19 продажи в стране упали вдвое, а в апреле снизились на -92,2% в годовом исчислении до 44 единиц. Причем большинство из проданных в этот период машин это госзакупки (в частности транспорт скорой помощи). А например Lada в апреле продала всего 10 (!) новых машин(-90%).

    Самые продаваемые автомобили в Азербайджане в 2018
    Самые продаваемые новые автомобили в Азербайджане в 2017
    Авторынок в 2018 и перспективы на 2019
    Импорт машин снова увеличился (осень 2019)