Q: What's the best place to get parts for your Lada?
A: Follow another Lada down the highway!

Hmmm... there's a fair amount of truth in that.

Over two years, I've only had one man laugh at me over the phone when I asked him for parts for my Samara. I was prepared; I'd been expecting it for a long, long time. I kept my cool and asked again nicely. When he stopped giggling, he became very professional. Either everyone else I've called is more polite or they don't know what I know about Samara parts. I learned the hard way that it's not easy to get parts for an unpopular car.

Every time that I go shopping for a new used car, I do exactly the same thing. Before I decide to buy the car, I head over to the nearest Canadian Tire store and I ask them what parts they have listed for it. This is the only correct way to do market research for a used car in Canada. Forget the Used-Car-Guides and the Lemon-Aid books. One visit lets me find out if I can buy all those things that have caused me trouble with my other (t)rusty machines in the past. Usually, the store will have most of the simple bits: mufflers, exhaust pipes, brake pads, brake shoes, alternators, starters. These are the barest of essentials for used cars.

Canadian Tire doesn't sell everything. They never have the front exhaust pipe with the resonator can, or door hinge pins or that funny shaped thing under the seat. Canadian Tire knows that we, the spendthrift home mechanics, can easily replace our resonators with a few old soup cans and glued together with the contents of a leftover tube of bathtub caulking. They know that we, the do-it-yourself home tool-and-die experts, can easily take a rusty old nail and a pair of Vise-Grips and make a new door hinge pin. They don't come right out and say it, but if we read between the lines carefully, we know we have their approval to take that funny looking thing from under the seat and throw it in the trash with all the wires and gizmos that attach to it.

The folks at the Canadian Tire are exactly like us. They know that we spend our Sundays watching Red Green and will never, ever, ever give them 325$ for a sun visor when we can make one out of an egg carton and an old pair of dress socks. Canadian Tire is good for the inner child. To satisfy the inner child, they also sell the absolutely unnecessary... like furry blue steering wheel covers with pictures of that Monsters Inc. Yeti all over them. If you've already bought a Lada, however, don't bother visiting Canadian Tire (unless you want a snazzy steering wheel cover). Why? Because...

I finally went to visit Canadian Tire a week after I brought the car home. The conversation that I had with the clerk when I went in to ask about Samara parts was very memorable. Actually what was memorable was how many times I heard that dude say No. There were a lot of Nos coming out of that guy. I know that he said Yes once, but I was too flabbergasted to make a note of it so I have no idea what part they have for us.

My parts search was getting off badly. I did a quick calculation based on how few Ladas I'd seen on the road over the years and of how rickety mine seemed. I knew that I was going to need a lot of parts. I knew then that I should either buy a Tercel or get used to taking the subway.

Well, I have to admit; I did go out and take a used Tercel for a test drive after that. It was nice enough. It just didn't have enough sex appeal. Where's the challenge? Where's the adventure? Where's the mystery? Where are the unexplained noises? And, do the Tercel owners have any chat groups at Yahoo? :-) Where's the camaraderie?

The next possibility on the list was to visit the local scrap yards. Surely it would be easy to find parts there? After a whole pile of calls and a muddy walk through one of the yards, I knew that I was wrong again. This didn't make sense to me for an eight year old car. No parts at the wreckers!... Wow... These cars really weren't popular!

The next step, much to my dismay, was to start looking up dealerships. Oooh, it made my brain hurt to think that I'd have to deal with a car dealership! But it was too late... I had the car and I was going to try and keep it so I had to find parts.

When's the last time you saw a Lada dealership? Me, it was about 1985. I didn't realize this until I started driving around looking for them. The Yellow Pages cleared up the mystery for me; instead of finding a whole bunch of quarter page ads for Lada dealerships, all I found was three little addresses. In a city the size of Montreal, that's nothing. We have more listings for topless 24-hour carwashes than we do for Lada dealers. What's even sadder is that each of them (Lada dealers) is at least 30 kilometers from where I live.

I visited one of the three and bought a pair of new hand brake cables. The place wasn't what I expected. What I found was a very old garage with a plywood sign nailed up outside with the Lada logo hand-painted on it. It is flanked on both sides by seventy year old town houses. There is no lot. No Ladas to be seen. No showroom. One mechanic. An inner city service station.

The second place I visited was different but very much the same. A little glass-fronted garage with two desks. One desk was being used by someone who was selling used cars, none of them Ladas. Amongst the huge houseplants basking in the sunlight of the full-height windows stood an eight foot tall lemon tree with unripened fruit as big as my fist in it. On the walls, there was a laminated print showing a Niva in action as an ambulance and a single, lonely, oiled-nickel colored Samara wheel cover. There were a few Nivas in the fenced off back lot. A couple of old banged up Samaras for sale along the side alley. For the first time, I realized that I would never see a new Lada again.

The prices for the brake cables and the other parts that I asked about were reasonable, but I was having doubts about how stable this network would be. And I was bothered that they are all so far from home. It wouldn't be convenient if I needed something to keep my car moving. At this time, I didn't have any other vehicle that ran in the wintertime. We used to be a sane one-car family.

Finally, I thought the unthinkable... "parts car". To me, a do-it-yourself type, but not a car enthusiast, a "parts car" is the ultimate sign of a true car NUT! I knew this because I had bought a parts car many, many years before to keep a 1974 Pinto running. What I learned from that experience was that only a real car nut would spend his time and energy pulling rusty bits off of one rusty old car to put them onto another rusty old car. I really didn't want to clutter up my life with another hunk of rusty bits. I had just sent one to the junkyard and I was enjoying the wide-open space in front of my home. Yuck!

I was pretty sure that there was no way that I would make it through the winter without needing some small repair. I also knew at this point that getting parts was going to be a hassle. I didn't really want a rusty mess sitting in my driveway but it couldn't be helped. I discussed it with Yvette and we decided to try and find one. If we didn't, it was very likely that our new, freshly painted with Ferrari-red-Tremclad Samara would be making it's way to the scrap yard as soon as anything went wrong.

So, I started searching for a second car. I looked in the newspapers and the Auto Trader for a few weeks with no success. It seemed odd to me that there were none for sale. My previous impression was that these cars were always showing up in the ads. It's always like that, isn't it? The search went on for a long time with no success.

During this same time, there was a fellow named Jason on the very west end of the island posting "For Sale" ads on one of the Internet newsgroups over and over again. I bet he was getting just as frustrated as I was. No one was answering his ads. When I eventually found his announcements and connected with him, he was dying to get rid of the little red car his roommate had left him. Jason is a car nut who likes to work on GMs and the Samara was getting in his way in the garage.

We arranged a meeting. I told Jason over the phone what my plans were and that I couldn't offer him much. He sounded relieved that he'd be getting rid of it. Yvette and I drove out to his place on a Sunday morning. It was very, very weird to see another red car just like ours. It was run down. The idle adjustment was set so high that we had to step back to talk to each other over the noise. The glove compartment was hanging open. It was your regular, rusty, ten year old Samara. Ironically, it had four very nice wheel covers on it. We took it for a test drive through the pretty neighborhood. It seemed good enough for what I wanted; the important parts worked fine so we headed back to Jason's yard to make the offer.

He was hoping to get $300 for it, I know that. I think he knew from our phone conversation that I wasn't going to offer that much. When I offered him a hundred dollars for it, I heard him thinking out loud, "a running car has got to be worth more than that". Unfortunately, it wasn't for me. I only wanted to have enough parts to get through one winter. It took a few minutes, but we finally settled on $120 and he kept the four nice wheel covers. We shook on it and I started making arrangements to come get the car later in the week.

This was our second Lada. This was our parts car. I only drove it twice. The second time, driving it home after the purchase, I realized that just about every single fuse must have been burned out as I rode fifteen kilometers in a grey drizzling rain without wipers or headlights. Good thing I hadn't noticed before; at the time I wouldn't have been able to fix any of it and the towing charges would have made me sure that I'd wasted my money. At the end of that drive, I parked it halfway down our driveway and left it there for nearly two years. Well, left most of it.

I didn't really feel like I'd made the right decision buying the parts car until I had to dig the blower fan out of it in the middle of a very cold January. The fan in my running car had been squeaking for a while and then, it stopped spinning altogether and started to puff out smoke. That moment would have been the end of my Lada adventures if it hadn't been for the parts car. I've driven through Montreal winters without a heater but I don't think that it can be done without a fan. It gets very, very cold here. Cold enough to coat the inside windows with thick frost over and over and over again.

Even though I scraped my fingers raw pulling the plastic shroud off in minus seven hundred degree weather to get the fan out, I was still very, very relieved that the parts I needed were sitting right there in my driveway. I didn't need to phone anybody or go searching in a blistery junkyard in waist high snow or borrow anybody else's car. That pile of decaying metal and rubber in my driveway was a gold-mine! That rusted out young car saved me countless hours of searching for parts and has dramatically improved my life. The list of parts that I used in the past two years is long... maybe one day I'll write a Johnny Cash song about it.

"Parts car" means something new to me now. It means something good. Not only does it have a spare whatever, it also keeps it in a very easy place to find. It's a million times better than those dozens of boxes full of Russian bits I have in the basement. Oh god!... now I realize why some people have been asking me if I'm a car nut!

Alas, during eight beautiful days in August 2004, our first parts car became a real "parts" car. Following the lead of my friends Mr. Ripley in Toronto and Mr. Fitch in Seattle, I put a new blade in my brother-in-law's reciprocating saw and cut little Sputnik Spot into sixteen nice bite-size pieces! I ended up having to buy my brother-in-law a new ripsaw. Let's just say that we're both happy with our new saws and leave it at that.

I learned a lot from Sputnik Spot. By cutting him up, I learned that uni-body construction is a lot like an aluminum canoe with a roof on it. By not having to repair him, I learned how to push out glass panels instead of cutting rubber seals! I learned not to let a Lada sit for so long with the parking brake on - oh boy, talk about stuck! I learned that two year old gas still has kick in it. I learned that neighbors get real friendly when something out of the ordinary is happening; I have lots of new friends now. I learned that Canadian Tire is not the only place on Earth to find parts. And I learned that a modern car is like a soft-shelled taco made from steel sheets instead of dough.

Spottie didn't turn me into a Lada fan. That happened with car number three. But if it weren't for that rusty pile of bits, I probably wouldn't have any Samaras at all today. Our #2 Lada kept our #1 Lada running.

So, finally...

Q: What's the best place to get parts for your Lada?
A: Park another Lada in your driveway!

Which is exactly what we did again ten months later!...

(continued in part 3) ^New!