Packard Forum Index » ZIS, ZIL, and other Packard Cousins!

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If in Germany one would drink beer on the job he would be jobless before the first bottle is empty.

I took it out myself then.

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Good move.

No offense meant, but to set the record straight, beer WAS available at BMW assemebly plant when we toured it in 1976, still in the '80s according to this, and as recently as 1992 or later in Germany, according to the Spartanburg SC newspaper when BMW opened their plant there, don't know about now.

digest.net/bmw/archive/v7/msg10707.html

Thank you Randerson for the history lesson. I was beginning to think tjat the "beer break" was just US propaganda. I had often heard of it frpom reliable sources.

As Tim Cole had stated, ONE beer is not a problem at all.

When I worked at Chrysler Canada in Windsor Ontario a lot of the workers streamed into the bars near the gates on their lunch breaks. Ditto at Ford.
The waiters would wait with trays of beer loaded for when the guys rolled in and swilled back as many as possible during the lunch break? I also had friends at Carling Brewery who were permitted to drink beer on breaks as well and there was nothing much wrong with the beer although I must admit the cars of the period left much to be desired for quality.
I owned several Geman cars during the 70s and all were high quality and reliable so maybe a few beers isn't a bad thing. My favourite car of the 70's is still the BMW 2002.

We had a '72 BMW 2800 (awesome but finicky), and later on a '74 BMW 2002 w/ 4 spd manual, we loved that car! But it was notoriously terrible in snow, so we went to a SAAB 96 and never looked back... nothing stopped that car! One time we got on I-70w after a concert at Kennedy Center in DC in the middle of a wicked hard blizzard, maybe 6-8" already on the highway, blowing snow, so we went 20 mi at maybe 30 mi/hr. and finally got off at our exit, and the MD State Police were blocking it... the road had been closed for hours... he couldn't beleive that we had gotten through!
We still have a '77 SAAB 99 2 dr "ducktail", my "summer" car in Vermont!

OK, let's get back to ZIL/ZIS/Chaika! Anyone know if the factories that made those cars are still producing vehicles? I loved Gorbachev's huge square looking ZIS (?) back in the 80s... it reminded me of a Dodge Polara in the front. Is there a successor to that car?

I concur with Clipper47. I worked at Chrysler's Sherwood Ave plant in Warren, MI in 1978. Didn't have to go to the bar at lunch to get a drink. Just go to the parking lot and sit in the foreman's RV. You could have beer and hard stuff too. Not to mention the occasional Pepsi bottle filled with Jack at one of the tire stations on the line.

Yeah, the vehicles left much to be desired quality wise then. That was 35 years ago. Much better now I presume.

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Yes, when mentioning 1976 the story comes closer to the truth - after a time jump of 37 years back to the last century, when Gerald Ford was President of the United States and Elvis released a new album.



But sorry, even then it remains a myth and with that it is suitable to the headline of this thread. The talk revolves around low-alcohol beer. Acc. to wikipedia: "in the United States, beverages containing less than 0.5% alcohol by volume (ABV) were legally called non-alcoholic").
This way to a related contemporary newspaper article, that additionally emphasizes the high quality standard of work.

We believe what we wish to believe.

Asked about modern ZIS, Chaika, &/or the Gorby-mobile... or has this been answered elsewhere?