The thing with tanks is that if you have them, you can't help but use them. Good thing you can't just pop over to the store on the corner and get one with some pocket change, or we'd be beginning to miss all these previously big SUVs roaming the streets.
Over in Eastern Europe, however, things are a little different. Once under a more or less official Russian occupation, things changed dramatically at the end of the 1980s when most of them decided they've had enough communism for one century and overthrew the Russian-sympathizing regimes. That meant a very large number of changes had to happen over a very short period of time.
When things tend to precipitate like that, it's hard to keep everything under control, so people ended up going home with AK 47s, while others had to make do with the keys to a Soviet tank. Not the most modern machines out there (the Russians kept the best ones to themselves and only sold the older models), but it's still a 30-ton all-terrain vehicle made of thick steel.
But anybody who bothered to read at least a page of history will know that Russian tanks were famous for one thing in particular: their legendary lack of reliability. The term "Russian Roulette" doesn't stem from here, but it would apply perfectly: each time the crew got into a tank, they had no idea what was going to break down next. Or when.
It would appear nothing has changed as this nightclub owner from Szubin, Poland called simply "Rafal" was about to find out the hard way. He is the owner of an establishment named "Club Mono" and, as The Mirror reports, he was rehearsing a spectacular entrance for Poland's Day of Freedom and Citizens' Rights national event. The routine included the tank going over a fire and presumably stopping in front of the club's entrance, at which point Rafal would jump out of the armored vehicle.
Well, it all went well until the stopping part. For some reason ("Something is probably broken. Maybe the gearbox? I know nothing about these things, but the driver could not do anything," Rafal said), the tank refused to stop until in any other way than attempting to move the building and failing. Rafal wasn't driving the tank, but he was inside at the moment. Somebody on the outside can be heard yelling some obscenities as the tank has another go at getting inside the club through the tiny door.
The actual damage wasn't that great, but Rafal was really shaken and so decided to cancel the party. To be honest, we would have done the same in his place: what would the point of having it be if he couldn't make his grand entrance?
"Boy meets car, boy loves car, boy gets journalism degree and starts job writing and editing at a car magazine" - 5/5. (Vlad Mitrache if he was a movie) Full profile
Would you like AUTOEVOLUTION to send you notifications?
Google News