I KISSED HER ON THE SIGNAL BUTTON

BEHIND THE WHEEL. "Around the world in 80 Days"

The action of Avtoradio, supported by Novaya Gazeta, continues. Yesterday, participants in the rally "Around the World in 80 Days" crossed the Russian border. This is the last "home" report by Yuri Geiko. The next one will be from Seoul. Eugene and I...

The action of Avtoradio, supported by Novaya Gazeta, continues. Yesterday, participants in the rally "Around the World in 80 Days" crossed the Russian border. This is the last "home" report by Yuri Geiko. The next one will be from Seoul.

Yevgeny Kalugin, a glorious journalist for the glorious Za Rulem magazine, and we are light drinkers, nevertheless opened a bottle of champagne. For the fact that we traveled all over Russia! Eleven thousand kilometers on our speedometer. For 15 running days. By Russia. Schedule, I'll tell you, the most severe. But we did it!

I won’t lie — before Vladivostok it was hard, very hard work. What's next for us? Resort? Korea, States and Europe from Portugal to Scandinavia? Let's see. Everything we learn, you learn. Everything, down to the smells, I will try to convey to you. You will travel with us in the Spektra all 26 thousand kilometers.

I said "Spectra" and stopped - I so wanted to kiss her in Vladivostok! In the forehead - in the hood. Or in the most sensitive place, in her most erogenous zone - in the signal button. For the fact that she remained here the same as she was in Moscow. But I won’t, I’m superstitious, we still have to go and go. But we will do TO-3 in Vladivostok, since we have all the filters and oil with us, in the States it will be more expensive.

Vladivostok! He burst into our salon with spicy southern smells, ocean humidity, fog and heat. We, who left the summer of Russia, caught up with the yellow autumn in Siberia, pierced the snowfalls of Baikal, the icy, blowing winds of Chita, we reached the Pacific Ocean and dipped our bodies in its salty, clear, warm and pushing water - they sunbathe here!

Vladivostok is the capital of right-hand drive Russia. Jeep City. When we were driving, we counted the oncoming "Japs". Moreover, they were counted for several days, for the purity of the experiment, but the main thing is in that road “throat” that they cannot bypass in any way: from Irkutsk to Chita. With us, minus the night time, it turned out - a car per minute. Multiplied, it turned out (excluding the railway) 350 thousand cars a year. We arrived in Vladivostok, read the local press, went to the famous "Green Corner" - the largest market, and the numbers coincided - up to 300 thousand Japanese right-hand drive very high-quality cars a year are injected by the Japanese auto industry into Russia. About two million travel around the country today. And about 10 million people live, eat, support families from the right-hand drive business.

The administration of Primorye, the Khabarovsk Territory, many cities east of the Ural Mountains, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the FSB and all other authorities drive right-hand drive cars.

I remember that in the target government program on road safety, which I criticized to the nines in Novaya Gazeta, five years and ten million rubles were allotted to study the problem of right-hand drive cars in Russia.

Lost money! Only here, in Vladivostok, in Primorye and in the Khabarovsk Territory, only here, in the Far East and Siberia, without arriving by plane, but after driving thousands of kilometers from end to end, you understand: there is a solution to the right-hand drive problem, and it is the only one - do not prohibit anything and don't touch anything! Because Russia has been “driving along the right-hand drive lane” for too long and has gone too far, because NEVER, neither a purely Russian, nor with anyone, a joint auto industry will be able to compete with Japanese second-hand! The prices here for the highest quality Japanese cars are ridiculous by Moscow standards - divide them by two or one and a half.

The only salvation from a right-hand drive Japan can be a left-hand drive two billionth China. He is so rapidly increasing the volume, and most importantly, the quality of his super-cheap cars, that if not now, then in five years he will catch up, and in 10-12 years he will beat to death Japan, Russia, and America combined. China will not conquer us - it will buy us. Those Chinese who for years denied themselves everything here in Russia, working day and night, without days off and holidays, are now hiring Russians.

Our path further lies on the ferry to Korea - to be honest, I did not plan this at first. But they really want to look at the "Spectra" - their creation, sprouted on Izhevsk, Russian land. And not just germinated, but successfully passed Russia from end to end. I’ll tell you a secret that before the circumnavigation of the world they hinted to me: you give us this car after the circumnavigation, and we will drive you a new one, the same one. Maybe they will put it in a museum? .. I don’t mind - my forty-first Moskvich was already standing in the AZLK Museum seventeen years ago after the first round-the-world trip, until the plant was plundered.

So the next report and the next issue of Avtolikbez on Avtoradio is from South Korea.