In USSR, despite all its downsides, there was a huge upside - magazines like "Техника - молодежи" and various educational brochures of the practical kind, aimed at explaining how to really make something.

And also a certain culture of hobbies associated with that, I guess all the energy from boredom went there.

So - I've read about competitions of hobby-crafted cars then. Like 20 guys would make some (like half of it would be something used in usual Soviet cars, think Reagan and the 10 years joke) parts of a car in their garages and apartments (and even at work, if they worked on some factory, for example ; in general workplace in USSR was, eh, a bit more permanent of an association, so the border between personal life and work, including tools, was fuzzy), then assemble them.

I think that could even be registered as a legal means of transportation. At least from what I've heard there is (or was) a surprisingly liberal part of Russian laws, allowing you to register almost anything as a car and get a number, with some criteria passed. Maybe these two things are related.