Theoretically yes, but in fact this was quite rare.
There were no official distributors of foreign cars in the USSR. The population was always told that Soviet industry was the best though every adult knew it were lies. Meanwhile, state-owned structures used foreign vehicles a lot. Soviet streets were crowded by Czechoslovakian and Romanian trolleybuses, trams and trucks. I remember visiting as a kid some expos with agricultural vehicles from East Germany and probably Yugoslavia. Soviet leaders preferred and/or owned foreign cars too. In early decades of the USSR, there were state taxi services using French cars. But nobody cared about an average person willing to buy a foreign car.
This, in turn, caused two major issues.
First, a person had to travel to another country to buy a car. This was near to impossible for a regular citizen. The USSR didn’t allow people to cross the border on their will. One had to be either a tourist (that had a very strict limit of cash to bring across the border, typically less than a single wheel costed), a specialist working by a state contract in another country, an officer in a Western Group of Troops (Soviet military contingent in the Eastern Europe), an embassy staff, an actor or musician on a tour, a crew member of a cargo ship or a plane - and that’s it. From the entire 270 mln population of the late USSR, only few tens of thousands had a theoretical chance to buy a car in another country.
Photo: Vladimir Vysotskiy, a popular Soviet bard who had many foreign concert trips, with his Mercedes S450. By rumors, there were only three such cars in Moscow, one more belonging to the head of the state, and another one to a popular poet.
Second, parts and consumables. Saying, a hub bearing was worn out, and you can’t buy a new one in the USSR. You would need to find some sailor on a cargo ship who will buy it for you for some commission, wait for months until that sailor returns from abroad, and pray that the new bearing fits your car - remember, no catalogs of parts are available, neither online nor printed.
Thus, even those people who could buy a car while working in another country, preferred either previously exported Soviet cars (those made for export were assembled by highly qualified engineers), or models having common parts with Soviet cars, like Fiats that were produced by licenses in many countries including the USSR. They knew that when their contracts are completed and they return back to the USSR, replacement parts won’t be an issue.
Photo: Soviet VAZ-2101 was a licensed copy of Fiat-124. Similarly, VAZ-2103 was a copy of Fiat-125. Just to note, Poland produced these cars too, knows as Fiat-124p and Fiat-125p.
Some other examples relate to earlier decades of the USSR. In the very beginning, there were lots of pre-Soviet foreign cars, including Rolls-Royces, Renaults etc in private ownership, but most of them were confiscated by the state later. Then, Soviet officers captured many German cars in WWII. These cars were mainly used as ‘service’ cars but some become private later.
Picture: Soviet officers and Opel Kapitan with a Soviet license plate. Some of these cars found a way to private owners years later.
Photo: Adler Trumpf, a pre-WWII German car that belonged to a famous actor Yuriy Nikulin, filmed in one of Soviet comedy movies.
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