Oh, ok, I didn't understand you. I really should stop with multi-tasking - reading and typing here and on my mobile.
Your favourite car - K70, if I remembered well? Or BX, 626, Mercedes 190 and Sierra?

With the first one you're right.

I'm very happy, that recently I've really found something from former YU about my car: http://imcdb.org/vehicle.php?id=234881
So if you maybe could find anything else... even real cars and their owners would be fine. You can tell them, that they can get parts at me.
Only at me and my friends.

Due the fact, that your favourite car and my favourite car were released at the same time, I have inevitably several GS-related stuff in my literature-collection, too.

And fure sure, for me as a child from the 70ies, the GS has a position in my memories.
As I wrote somewhere else, as a little boy I was really fascinated from a GS-TV-commercial-clip. That one, where a truck has lost barrels and the following GS has lifted up his chassis an drove over them.
I was so impressed, that every time, when I went to the dentist, had "to play Citroen GS" before - lifting me up and down with the chair. After then he could start his work.

Here we have big Volkswagen Beetle fan club, they even have their site - www.buba-beograd.com. Until 6-7 years ago it was common site to se Bettle on the street or in the ads, but now times have changed - you can find a few in the ads, but very little on the street.



They also have something in common - air-cooled flat-four boxer engine. I guess that you have Haynes manual for GS in your literature for sure!

Some more abandoned and dying cars from Serbia (pictures from www.citroenforumsrbije.com )

Citroen Oltcit (or as we like to call it - Oldshit ) - very crappy car, it was junk even while it was new, people used to change it's original engine with GS Super's 1.3 engine, due to better quality of french-made engine. People started dumping it after 5 years, altough there was a 90's crisis in Serbia - no one wanted to buy it.




Two GS's from Novi Sad, north Serbia. They used to look like this 2-3 years ago:



Owner didn't want to sell them, and now they look like this:




Citroen DS - early model, saved:



Scrap-metal collector's yard near Zaječar, east Serbia:



Citroen CX - used to belong to hospital in Jagodina, central Serbia:



Citroen DS:





Citroen Dyane:



Citroen XM S1:



DS's, on south edge of Belgrade. Owner lives somewhere in France, but he doesn't want to sell them, so they are dying there...




My friend's 2CV - donor car, scrapped last summer:



Citroen Dyane, Zastava 101 etc.:



Something very old, in distant village near mountain Zlatibor:



Citroen GS:




Citroen BX's:




Citroen CX:




Recycling center yard in Železnik, south edge of Belgrade (picture with 3 Yugos, VW Golf 1 and Lada was taken there):

For the record, the Zlatibor wreck looks like an early 50s Fiat 1400 - from before Zastava got interested?

I love the picture of the Junk Car Recycling yard in Železnik that you posted!

Sorry, but you went into the wrong direction. I'm not engaged with Beetles. I prefer more hightech Our club-page: www.k70-club.de

P.S. No, I don't have any Haynes-books (there was never one for the K 70). The GS-related literature, I'm owning are magazines and quartet-games, which are including both cars - which was usual for two cars from summer 1970.

Few more abandoned and scrapped Citroens (and one Zastava):

GS Super:




Zastava 128:



Citroen Ami 8:





Citroen CX:



1978. GS Pallas:





Few more GS Super's from same location:




GSX:



Visa:



BX - this one was owned by parfume smuggler. That hole seen under the trunk - it was made and used for that purpose. In order to put parfumes in, you had to remove rear bumper. :

Why not? In 1989 I've used my Dad's 1981 VW Passat for smuggling, too. To bring newspapers and political magazines into the DDR. They were strictly forbidden there.


The last years I've smuggled a bit, too, coffee from Holland. Last year the rule was cancelled, that you are allowed to bring max. 20 kg of coffee with you. Before that it was smuggling, and if you were catched, you have to pay fine and the saved tax, too.
One time I was really lucky - the German boder patrol has stoped me, when I had minimum 30 kg with me, plus ca. 200 boxes of cigarettes. When they've asked me, what I've bought in NL, I've saved my ass with something, which I'm very good in - talking bullshit.
I've babbled "Oh yes, many healthy things, for example much vegetables. You see, I should better loss weight, so I'm eating fresh vegetables. And fat reduced milk and dairy-stuff. Do you know, how big is the choise of it in Winterswijk?
blablabla....
They've rolled with their eyes and have shooed me away.

All that I've done for my colleagues and my wife's family. I don't smoke and don't drink coffee by myself.

A question about the abandoned cars: are you allowed to let them stand around on public streets?

In Germany it's forbidden to park a car without a valid registration on areas with public access, so on private groud, which is not fenced to the open street, too.
An on private ground, even fenced one, it's forbidden to store non-registrated cars and wrecks on natural ground, only on concrete and plastered surface.
There are punishments for that and abandoned cars on public ground will be towed and brought to a junk-yard. And the owner of the car has to pay for it afterwards.

My God, this is worse than smuggling goods to Yugoslavia from Trieste back in 70's and 80' in order not to pay high taxes, I tought that things like that never happen in EU! Smuggling coffee from Greece to Yugoslavia was very popular in mid-80's, due to lack of coffee in Yugoslavia. In old TV show called "Bolji Život", that was on air from 1986. to 1991. (last "realistic" Yugo-TV show, that truely represents life of average Yugoslav family in the 80's), shows smuggling situation in one episode - and at the end publician (guess that's the word for a guy working on the customs) catches main caracter and thinks that he is gay (Yugo 45A, Citroen AX, Visa and BX, Mercedes 190, 1989. Audi 80 (the egg, as it is nicknamed here) etc. can be seen, all brand new ). In 90's everything was smuggled - from gasoline to meat !



Abandoned cars are not allowed to stand on the streets and parkings. Inspector puts a warning on your windshield (dear owner of ...., you have to move your car within 24 hours/48hrs/7 days...), and if you don't move your car - it is taken to the abandoned car lot (from where pics from previous page come). If you want your car back, you must pay approx. 5000 dinars (50 euro) fine + 200 dinars (2 euros) for each day car spent on the lot (but usually you pay just first part of the fine, and rest is forgiven). If you don't claim your car back after some time (3 months period or so), it is sold as scrap metal, and there is no fine you have to pay (but you loose your car). But it's not common people to abandon their cars - they usually sell them to some junk-yard or recycling center (and you can get up to 80 euros, depending on the car's weight).
In private ground you can keep whatever you want, but if you want to make a junkyard you must have a hall for dismounting cars, separate tanks for car liquids, paved yard, electricity and running water, some kind of storehouse for parts(with concrete floor, ventilation etc.), even some kind of schredder for car bodies... Experts I've spoken with say that this new environmental law is more strict than laws in EU, because government wants to prevent same thing that happened to Romania and Bulgaria - beat-up cars lying all over the place, on improvised junk-yards in the countryside. Owners of the junk-yards deprecated a bit, but they changed nothing. Honestly - many of them are scum. This is the story why.

As I previously said, average car in Serbia is 14,7 years old and importing cars that are damaged of doesn't meet Euro 3 standard can't be imporetd. If you want to boy a part from abroad, you can - but you have to pay taxes, customs etc. For example, if you want to buy a VW Golf 2 1.6 diesel engine in Germany - you can, altough it doesn't meet Euro 3, but only if you own VW Golf 2 with 1.6 diesel engine. You also have to pay high taxes - about 10% of engine's catalog value. Pretty complicated, huh? So here is what people do.

There are many people from Serbia that work in Germany, Austria, Switzerland etc., and they all have right to drive cars with plates from the countries where they temporarly work. When they enter Serbia, no one writes down if they came by car, bus, on foot - if that was also checked it would take days to cross the border! So, people from with let's say Austrian working visa buy beat-up Passat B3 for 300 euros, drives it back to Serbia and sells it for 800 euros to some junk-yard (smaller amount is used for different purpose, will be explained). He takes the plates and goes back to Austria by bus, where he unsubscribes(I guess that is the word for situation when you return your plates to the police) the car.
Guys from the junk-yard dismount the car, take all sellable parts, and then cut rest of the car to pieces and sell it as scrap metal. Everything is finished in max 2 days, and parts are later sold on car-parts black market. They pay nothing to the state, and earn huge amounts of money - bonnet is 50-70 euros, doors 40, bumpers 50 etc, depending on the model. They can earn up to 10 times more they had to pay to bring the car here! But there is one more thing that can be done with illegaly imported cars.
Junk-yards also buy cars with serbian plates that are damaged in crashes, beat-up cars, rusty etc. They are perfectly legal, but not usable anymore. So they find usable "illegal" car, and change chasis numbers , and then sell them as perfectly legal and "in good shape" cars! Some owners of beat-up cars also do the same thing - buy same car as theirs from abroad, bring it here somehow (usually find someone with working visa to drive it here, usually someone they know) and in "specialised shops" change chasis number (price depends on the model - from 250 to 800 euros)! They sell old car as scrap metal, and drive "new one" with papers from the previous! Usually such cars are Golf Mk2, Opel Kadett E, Citroen BX, Citroen AX (changing numbers is very easy on Citroens, since number on old models is embedded only on one spot), Mazda 626, 323, Audi 80/100 - "the egg", and lately even newer cars - Opel Vectra/Astra F, Omega, Renault Clio, Audi and BMW models that are not Euro 3... Classical crime!
Police now has special lab where they send cars they suspect are illegal - most modern equipment that includes some lasers, cameras, chemicals and hundred of other things that halp them to find if someone messed with the car. It is also posibble for civilians to check if car they want to buy is "correct" - for approx. 300 euros they find out if car was sometimes crashed and then repaired, if someone was messing with chasis numbers, even if car's engine was changed some time ago! They also check Interpol's stolen car database.
A lot of old (20+ yeras)cars in Serbia was "renewed" in the way I described. Last summer, police organised control of car chasis numbers - only during one night they prized 20+ cars on one single spot in Belgrade, most of them 15+ yrs old. A year ago 6-member group from Ruma (60 km's northwest of Belgrade) was arrested - they specialised in changing chasis numbers on non-Euro 3 cars. Just imagine - you buy crashed Golf 3 for 300 euros, another one for 400 euros from Germany, have some expences to bring it here and change te number, maybe bribe someone, and sell it for 3500 euros! Classical crime!
Cars that are not legaly imporeted are sometimes sold over ads - but most of people that sell them trough the ads are not part of some organized group, and they earn very little per car. Police doesn't bother them (doesn't call them in order to prize cars etc) that much, because they have more important things to do. Also, the law in that area is full of holes - new one is supposed to be voted soon. In general, cars that have serbian plates are cold "domestic", ones with foreign plates are called "foreigners", and ones with changed numbers are "re-typed". Here are some ads to make an example:

Obviously "re-typed" BX - add says it is from 1985., and it is obvious that this is Series 2 BX:

http://www.polovniautomobili.com/oglas264370/citroen_bx_14/

Another one - GTi didn't exist in 1986:

http://www.mojauto.rs/polovni-auto/471444

"Domestic" BX, perfectly legal:

http://www.polovniautomobili.com/oglas270985/citroen_bx_16/

"Foreigner" - waits for someone to buy it - to use it for parts or "re-type" it:

http://www.mojauto.rs/polovni-auto/425787

One of those BX's has a "B" Belgium sticker and a "YU" for its second life.

Excellent photos!!

But remember - not all cars with D/A/F/B/E/CH etc. stickers are "illegal" - on some cars people left them on because a) they don't care, it's a pain in the ass to remove the sticker or some similar reason or b) some poeple (some kind of serbian "rednecks") like to have a sticker from the country car came from, because then "neighbourhood can know that I can buy a car from Germanu/Austria/Switzerland etc" ! Like this Citroen XM - it was imported legaly long time ago(2003. I think) and still has "D" sticker on the bumper:

http://www.mojauto.rs/polovni-auto/401192

But anyway - whatewer the case is you can always know from which country the car was imported.

@chicomarx: on the close Autobahn A2 I often see trucks, loaded with cars from B on their way to Lithuania and Belarus. From there many of them were smuggled to Russia, because officially you cannot import odler cars to Russia.
They don't buy cars only in Belgium and Germany, from many other countries, too, even RHD-cars from Britain.

And it's very funny, that nowadays there are trucks in the opposite direction, coming from Poland, loaded with old Japanese cars (min.15-18 years old) on the way to Rotterdam and other ports - for the export to Africa.


Friends from Sweden told me, that German imported cars aren't really popular there. In the last years newer cars, especially Diesel-version were brought from here to Sweden.
The reason is the half-criminal "Tacho-Justierung", which is offered here. It means "adjusting the tachometer", but in fact they are turning back the mileage.
So my friends have put off the plate-frame of the former dealer in Germany.


I'm showing, that may K 70 was from Italy. I've left the white front turn signals and that ones on the front fender, too. And the Italian papers in the windscreen, too.
Unfortunately the dealer's sticker was hidden by the back plate and I didn't get an answer, when I wrote to the former garage in Ventimiglia



Back to the abandoned cars: here they are getting these stickers "Remove it within the next ... days", too. They have the nickname "Nimm dir, was du brauchst-Aufkleber" - "Take what you need-sticker"
I must admit, that when I was a boy and was strolling around the town with my bicycle, I always had a little screwdriver and an original VW-hubcap-removal-hook with me.
Today I don't do this any more. I don't have inhibitions to wreck such an abandoned car, but now I'm living on the countryside, where they aren't so common as at industrial sites of a big town and the more important reason is: the cars, which were abandoned today are boring and uninteresting. What shall I do, as a classic car-freak with junk from the mid-90ies?

It's true that loads of cars are shipped from Antwerp to Africa... Where they don't have much in the way of recycling, motor oil and heavy metals are dumped straight into the sea with a big pipe line.

Yesterday I was really surprised, when I saw a truck, loaded with five ca.20 year old Japanese vans, Hiace, Urvan, etc. - truck and loaded cars were coming from Norway!
Strange, that it make sense, to carry these old vehicles from there to -I guess- Antwerpen or Rotterdam!

It does seem a bit strange to see old Japanese vans being bought from Norway and Finland and sent to Africa. But I think they are rare in Central Europe and the best market is in Scandinavia or Greece. Toyota Hiace (3rd Gen) and Nissan Urvans are the most popular vehicles for export.

Here is one Finnish company exporting cars to Africa. Mostly Toyotas as you can see:

http://www.nettiauto.com/yritys/hansasun

It's good to see old Corollas and Carinas taken away

Poor Accord

They've got a Peugeot 505 estate too. I imagine that might well go to west Africa, where 504 and 505 estates are popular as taxis.
http://www.nettiauto.com/peugeot/505/2855595#yritys=hansasun

This is my first car from 17 years ago. It had been sitting in somebodys garden for a few years before I got it. The photo makes it look better than it actually was.

Nice, but sad. I like the look of a lot of European cars.

~Midna