New in the city: Old Dacia cars take tourists on a communist-era tour of Bucharest

Communism. That is one thing most people think of when they think about Romania. A Romanian entrepreneur decided its time to take the country’s communist history from the books and the museums and present it to tourists in a different way – a trip around Bucharest in star cars of the communist regime, accompanied by guides who know the story.

Born and raised in a Romania led by the strong arm of communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, Șerban Cornaciu knows what living in those days really meant. He still remembers the day-long drives in his parents’ Dacia when they had to travel somewhere outside the city, and the frequent stops. With these memories in mind, an extensive research and the help of two other associates, he managed to launch a different tourist service in Bucharest – The Red Patrol Communist Duty Tour. The service takes tourists back to the times of the communist Bucharest with the help of two fully restored vintage Dacia cars, which, in the Romanian spirit, were named Malvina and Domnica. Șerban Cornaciu, who has an experience of over 25 years in marketing and advertising, wanted to start something outside the box. He came up with the idea of Red Patrol after trying similar tourist services in former Eastern bloc countries. “I first discovered these tours in Berlin in 2016, where I traveled with the Trabant, then Warsaw and Prague or Budapest, with some tours taken in a Trabant while others in a Polski Fiat, tours that caught my attention because they represented an interactive way to travel to the communist past of that city,” he told Romania-insider.com. The story of Red Patrol began to take shape in November last year, under the umbrella of the Gold Voyage travel agency. After months of extensive research about the communist past of Bucharest and the hard work put into finding and restoring the vintage Dacia cars, Șerban Cornaciu and his two associates finally managed to launch the new service in July 2018. The investment, which so far amounted to some EUR 10,000, was covered with money from his own resources. The name, Red Patrol, was found and decided together with Șerban Cornaciu’s partners in the Koala advertising agency, which he co-founded in 2001. The name describes what this tourist service is all about: a patrol of the city in a communist-era car. “We propose tourists a Red Patrol of Bucharest in Dacia 1300 or 1310 cars restored to a state similar to the original one in the ‘80s, so we present things from the perspective of a driver / passenger from the communist period of the city,” Cornaciu explains.