When Jalopnik writer Collin Woodard dropped this tweet from the official GOP account into Slack, I had to double check and triple check to see if it was a joke, but nope — that really is a picture of President Trump, doing his favorite weird dance that looks like a baby who has just discovered his hands, in front of a Lada. And not even a relatively new Lada either, as it appears to be a VAZ-2101, one of the earliest models of the car produced in the 1970s and ’80s. What the hell?
The meme style image bears the watermark of The Daily Signal, a serious conservative news website that clearly does not have an automotive or satirical section, but even so, this is not a retweet from a potentially smarmy site. It’s a full blown post by the official GOP account, a tweet that proudly proclaims “The One Big Beautiful bill will drive the return of the great American car.”
The One Big Beautiful bill will drive the return of the great American car.
🇺🇸🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/poAsG8pDKg— GOP (@GOP) July 31, 2025
That roof line, those wheel arches — pure Lada, comrade. Ladas are, most notably, not American-made cars. Until recently, Lada’s home was in Tolyatti, Russia, on the Volga River. That was before sanctions against Russia due to the invasion of Ukraine forced the company to pause production. Renault had a controlling stake in Avtovaz, the parent company of Lada, but pulled out that same year, CNN reports. The company was founded as a state-run car company (as almost all of the companies in the USSR were) and basically built rebadged Fiat 124s that could survive the brutal Russian weather.
The right car, at the right time, at the right price
It’s such a ridiculous and frankly surprising mistake to make. There is such a wealth of American cars, both from the past–if that’s what you want for your message about the future for some reason–and from the present, which would make a hell of a lot more sense. Heck, you could have put a Tesla back there and repaid your best frenemy’s many generous donations to the winning GOP candidate’s campaign with a little more free publicity. God knows Tesla could really use the help right now, as sales have slumped ever since CEO Elon Musk dipped his toes into the swamp of Washington D.C.
But even as a mistake, using this Lada image makes no sense. It even looks like a crappy old car. The civilian, non-car person might see a Chrysler K-Car in those boxy and uninspiring proportions, but that is also bad for your brand. Why would you pick not just an old, but proudly economical vehicle? The vision of the future of the auto industry this tweet is selling strikes me as pretty grim, even besides the fact that is an old Soviet-made car in the background. Maybe it made it on because the car is yellow, and some 20-year-old social media manager thought yellow means it is a cool car. Really sloppy work.
The Lada is better known these days for taking a monumental amount of abuse and continuing on their merry way. From our own Lada project car to Garage 54, a YouTube channel which has welded a Lada to another Lada, given a Lada legs and powered one with just 50 cordless drills among other things, Ladas have staying power. Maybe that’s what the GOP wanted to convey: an automotive industry as unstoppable as a Soviet made car.
