On Tour with the UAZ

You are cruising the pacific coast of California in your Mustang, the wind flows through your hair and the engine purrs as you thread the car through the gentle turns along the coastal highway. What could be better? How about trundling along in a UAZ!

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Our UAZ parked in front of some laundry.

During my holiday to the central Asian countries of Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, we rented a UAZ-452 from a guy named Vlad in Bishkek. The UAZ is the natural choice for this region. It is the kind of place that requires a go-anywhere vehicle. Just that, the UAZ-452 is a four-wheel drive cab-overmeaning the front passengers sit on top of the engine.

van that has been mass-produced since 1965, originally in the Soviet Union, but now Russia. It has a distinctive snub-nosed shape which has led it to be nick-named the bukhanka or (bread) loaf and is as legendary there as the VW bus is in the west. It remains one of the most popular models of vehicle on the roads of central Asia, where it is famed for its rugged construction…and also terrible reliability.

But perhaps reliability is overrated if it is nice to drive? So what is the UAZ like to drive? Well it definitely has some vintage features. Firstly and often skipped by car reviewers, is actually unlocking the vehicle. In the case of the UAZ, it has a main key for the ignition as well as a secondary key (similar in appearance to one you might use to open a mailbox) to open the doors and definitely no central locking. So expect a lot of pacing around the van, making sure that all the doors are locked or unlocked.

Once you have jumped up and into the van (there are no handles), you will be greeted by a spartan interior: a rubberised, wobbly steering wheel and a likewise wobbly gearstick for the driver. There is also no centre console, instead there’s just a bulging carpeted mound, under which the engine is located. On the mound are two stacked levers which are used to engage the four-wheel drive and low-range. Of course, they frequently jam and require a bit of first-gear clutch action to get them unstuck. Naturally all UAZ drivers know the routine. The dashboard has a eight-segment LCD display to show the time and fuel level of the two tanks The tanks are connected, so that one does not have to consciously switch fuel sources. However, they must still be filled up separately, leading to annoying manoeuvres at petrol stations as the filling points are on opposing sides of the van.

but no outdoor temperature, as the UAZ can handle any climate. But if it should get cold, engaging the heater is as simple as pulling up a flap over the exposed pipe-work extruding from the dashboard.

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Our UAZ parked in a field

Now that you have started the van and are off and driving, you will notice that the engine doesn’t do all that much. Although it has a relatively large displacement petrol engine at 2.5 litres, it has as much horsepower as a city car. However, this didn’t really concern us as we were mostly travelling on some pretty awful dirt tracks in the steppe. Here we could only do 20-40 km/h, and the speed inside that range was dictated by how much we felt the van was going to fall apart, as it sank into the deep potholes and corrugations on those remote roads. Our model of UAZ was an ex-ambulance version (the UAZ-452A), which I believe has even worse suspension than the normal ones. This I can definitely believe as the van would shake, creak and squeak over essentially every imperfection in the road. Meanwhile, Toyota Land-Cruisers and even clapped out 20 year-old VW Passats would rocket by and overtake us!

Driving on the blacktop was definitely more comfortable and the van had a bit of a land-yacht feel to it. There was an extreme amount of play in the steering wheel and similarly when the car was in gear, the gear-stick had more wobble than a typical gearbox would have in neutral. This was compounded by the fact that 5th gear was hilariously far away from the driver and you would have to lurch over to the middle of the dashboard to reach it, hopefully not swerving to the side of the road while you did it. As for the fuel economy, it wasn’t bad at 14L/100km and we even managed to run it on 72 octane fuel that we picked up in water bottles from remote villages.

Overall, the UAZ is a unique but terrible vehicle, and if you buy one in the West, you should feel ashamed of yourself! However, in the context of Kyrgyzstan, I can confidently say there is no vehicle I would rather have chosen for this trip.