Here’s something a bit different. Road and Track drove a Lada 1500 in the UK due to the expectation that it “..is the model soon to be imported to the US”. I’d rather forgotten about that, but it sure is something worth pondering about as to how that would have gone down. The driving experience showed that the Lada had some positives along with the negatives.
The steering and suspension were the major flaws, and obviously something got lost in translation from Italian to Russian, as the Fiat 125 and 124 were both widely praised for their competence and fun-to-drive characteristics in this regard. Oh well; must be something to do with the Russian roads, or the Russian shocks, or…
So how do you think this would have unfolded if this Lada had come to the US?
Quite a lot of them came to New Zealand in a trade deal some still survive and the mainLada importer is still in business in Napier Gee Motors, so you can still get parts, they werent praised for anything new except the very low price, average reliability and driving dynamics, they sure werent a patch on the 125 which handled well and in T spec went well too.
Probably the same outcome Yugo and Daewoo had.
They may have ended up like Nissan when they nearly went bankrupt in the 90s. In Russia they ended up with Renault having majority control, like Nissan in the U.S.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AvtoVAZ
In central Florida, I’d occasionally see Ladas with Canadian plates. Their drivers must have been brave souls indeed to take a Soviet-built car so deep into a huge country where absolutely no service or support could be expected. Reading the above article, though, it appears that Ladas were equipped with extensive toolkits. They were probably needed. Here’s a Canadian Lada with impact bumpers.
There is a Miami-based importer of Lada parts. Their main clientele is Cuban-Americans whose relatives in Cuba own Ladas there, but they do keep a parts stock in Florida.
Yes, now you can buy Lada parts in Miami. However, in the 1980s and 1990s when these cars were most common in North America, there was a hard and fast embargo in the USA on the importation of anything from Cuba. Any Lada parts would need to be smuggled in, and since there were no Ladas sold in the USA, I can’t see many people taking the risk for so little demand. Especially since smuggling cocaine was so much more profitable.
I remember reading in quite a few places that the Russians were threatening to bring the Lada to the U.S. but it just never happened. I think though it was sold in Canada? (Along with Eastern Bloc cars like the Skoda – I went into a Skoda showroom in the 1980s out of curiosity during a vacation trip to Canada. I probably still have the brochures around somewhere.)
Yes, the Lada along with the Skoda and Dacia from Roumania was sold in Canada.
One guy filmed back in 2013, the Lada Niva 4×4 somewhere around Quebec City still on the road. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjOBX0BN2UY
And here a Lada 1500/Signet commercial.
“A whole car for half price”—I’m trying, I really am, but I literally cannot even.
Many of these came to Canada as Lada Signets in the 1980’s, and they were primitive turds. Their only evident attribute or attraction was a low acquisition cost, though at the potentially considerable expense of ones’ dignity. They were unrefined, unreliable in the experience of the people that I knew who owned them and offered nothing to anyone who cared about a positive driving experience.
For some reason, in Canada we got Yugo’s, Lada’s, Skoda’s, Dacia’s and Innocenti’s in varying but noteworthy quantities through most of the ’80’s, all masquerading as actual considerations in one’s purchase contemplation’s. Earlier than this in the ’60’s we had various Austin’s, Vauxhall’s, Humber’s and things of that sort, not nearly as bad as the 80’s crop of largely iron-curtain automotive detritus.
My wife’s next door neighbors had matching, his and her Lada’s. What a statement…..
There’s an excellent reason why Canada received quantities of unpopular Eastern European cars in the 70’s and 80’s. The Canadian market was a stepping stone to the real prize, the US market . These auto makers planned to use their Canadian experience to refine their products and distribution in preparation for a move into the USA.
Of course this didn’t work. However there was also a oddball Korean maker who used this technique to great success at the same time . Hyundai started in Canada with their Pony model, which was just as cheap and primitive as a Lada.
When I lived in Panama for a few years in the 90’s, these were everywhere, as taxis. They weren’t very comfortable for a taxi passenger, and you could have guessed they were Russian by their character even if you didn’t know. Of, course, I never got to drive one myself; I did flirt for a while with buying a NIVA 4wd. Those cost less than $10,000 and I figured I could bounce around the jungle in one for a while and sell it when I left, but a Panamanian friend talked me out of it.
Getting back to the Ladas, their chief virtues were their cheapness, crudeness, and parts availablity. They were less than the third of the cost of a Toyota, making it much easier to start out in the taxi business. Their crudeness made them easy to repair with a screwdriver and a hammer, and thriftiness being next to dishonesty on the chart of Pamana City Taxi Driver chart of virtues, parts were available on any street with an unattended Lada on it. Since the design never changed every mechanical part was completely interchangeable, something not true for the otherwise preferable Toyotas.
I think these would have failed in the U.S. because of the wide availability of used cars. That is, you could buy a decent used car that would be better in every respect for about the same price as a Lada.
For reference, according to this website: http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/70scars.html
In 1976, you could buy a new Chevy Malibu for $3671 or a Ford Pinto for $2895, while the body of the R&T article says the Lada would retail for $2880. If so, that’s not such a great value proposition compared to a one or two year old used car.
I was showing a house last week and the neighbor’s driveway contained a Niva in what appeared to be excellent condition! I was quite surprised to see it, it had temporary plates and was presumably freshly imported from somewhere. Had I not had clients with me I would have started taking pictures but as the situation was, it wasn’t really conducive to it…I’ll be keeping an eye out for it though.
Was the front differential leaking?
Good Nivas are great little toys bad ones were wrecked for parts directly off the ship some wouldnt even run when they landed and got towed off, it seem there was an export quota to meet so X number of cars were exported whether they’d actually finished assembling them or not.
Sounds like English cars; truck arrives with a shipment of new Austins & MGs, mechanics put down tools to push new cars off truck, into back lot, to be made to run during PDI. It wasn’t that amusing after a while.
“Was the front differential leaking?”
Did you sell one with that condition recently or is that a known malady? Sorry, I was dressed in my house-showing finery and thought it slightly inappropriate to prostrate myself in front of my clients on a stranger’s driveway to check. Maybe next time, it was only our first time out 🙂
My Russian friends report Nivas have very weak front ends. Ball joints and tie rods wear quickly and are difficult to replace. Front-end rebuilds are common every 25,000 miles.
“My Russian friends report Nivas have very weak front ends. Ball joints and tie rods wear quickly and are difficult to replace. Front-end rebuilds are common every 25,000 miles.”
It’s a function of poorly made replacement parts combined with the atrocious roads that these cars are commonly run on. I have several aquaintances that run RWD Ladas in Siberia, one an active cab driver, the other a retired cab driver, both used their personal vehicles for work. This is in Biysk, a fairly typical run down de-industrialized city in Siberia with horrible roads. The one guy told me he simply rebuilds his entire front end every spring. It’s cheap in terms of parts (of not the best quality) and if you do it often enough, not too difficult given that parts don’t have enough time to rust up and just from practice. It’s the Russian way I suppose. Do OEM FWD Toyota front ends last longer in that environment? Unequivocally yes. But they are proportionally more expensive to buy and more expensive to service, although there are plenty of Chinese and Russian made replacement parts for those Corollas to bring the cost (and quality) down for them too.
“As part of my realty service to you, my valued customers, permit me to examine the neighbors’ automobile closely to ensure that it will not leak fluids onto your lawn. All part of my ‘100% Satisfaction’ policy, I assure you.”
With a client last week we pulled up behind a Japanese spec Landcruiser, which the client did recognize as an import thanks to its RHD. Same day in a different neighborhood we came across a Bay Window Bus repurposed as an elevated playhouse.
Either the Ford or Lada price must be wrong – or if the projected Lada price is accurate, it explains why they never tried to sell any.
They were relatively popular in the UK, but a base Lada was something like 35-40% cheaper than the cheapest Ford, which would have been a tinny 957cc Fiesta with no radio, 4 spd stick and one door mirror.
Ladas seemed most popular with men over 50 on council estates – it was a “proper” rwd new car for the price of a used Ford roller skate. Wirewheel hubcaps were a common addition on these and FSOs.
I think it’s likely that the $2880 is a hard conversion from the price of the British model tested, not a projected U.S. price.
I recall the list price of the base Riva 1200 being about £2800 in the UK in 1989 and that my parents bought a base model Fiesta for £5300 including all the hidden charges and £100 road tax, in 1988.
Maybe Ladas weren’t quite so cheap in the 70s. IIRC, the only other cars with sub £3000 list prices in 1989 were FSO, Yugo, Skoda, Citroen 2CV and (FSM built) Fiat 126.
These were actually pretty popular in Canada, circa 1983. A lot of aging hippies bought them as a way to flip the bird at evil capitalism. Well, the Commies sure got their revenge with the Lada. The 1500 was about the most poorly made product I had ever seen, and soon back yards all over north Vancouver Island were littered with expired Ladas.
The really weird thing about the Lada was the quality control. Some of the cars were actually put together fairly well, but others were just disasters. Most were disasters. Even the Skoda was better.
“A lot of aging hippies bought them as a way to flip the bird at evil capitalism.”
Those are most likely the only people that would have bought one in the U.S.
Hippies and maybe that one weird College prof that everyone avoided in public.
In Britain, where they were common, they seemed to be strictly a working class phenomenon. Hippies might have been in a 2CV, a Morris 1000 they had been nursing along for years, or maybe something French.
My dad had a teaching colleague who fit the weird professor bill – he had a string of rear engined Skodas. Ladas were ultimately conventional. They were an option for the curmudgeon after Ford discontinued the Cortina. (Peace be upon it)
My wife worked for an Ottawa import dealer that acquired a Lada franchise when they first came to Canada. She has said the same about the quality – there were really good ones and (more) really bad ones, with little in between.
Stalins revenge LOL, the VW beetle is called Hitlers revenge here and Ive heard the Morris 1100 referred to as Churchills revenge, cheap crap cars are always someones payback. Skodas came here too they were another cheap sometimes nasty car, most famously the Octavia was rebodied here as a light commercial which was truly rubbish.
The 1100 was sold here in the U.S. for a few years first as the MG Sport Sedan, then later as the Austin America (in 2-door, 1300 cc form) with the intention of eating some of VW’s lunch.
It did not end well, particularly when the little Austin was equipped with its most touted feature for American drivers: a 4-speed fully automatic transmission at a time when the best-selling import (VW bug) only offered a semi-automatic.
Unfortunately the Austin America trans lived in the engine sump and shared the engine oil. It would typically grenade quickly – particularly with American owners who tended to neglect maintenance. Then there was the terminal rust built in at the factory. It turned out the Hun had little to worry about this time around.
I’ve not seen an Austin America in the wild for decades.
https://www.hemmings.com/magazine/hsx/2007/06/Austin-America/1468761.html
Having the gearbox share engine oil is not, in itself a problem. Most motorcycles (excluding 2-strokes) have been doing this for decades with no problems.
Well, metal filings from the transmission don’t do the engine any good and combustion byproducts in the oil don’t do the transmission any good.
Probably more of a problem with an automatic transmission which requires very clean internals for proper operation. Also a lot of owners didn’t bother to check oil regularly and running those low on oil was guaranteed self-destruction. (Are there any other automatic transmissions which utilized engine oil?)
There is a web site devoted to the Austin America, and they recommend changing the oil every 1000 miles with the automatic transmission! They also document various other weaknesses in the automatic and some fixes.
http://www.austinamericausa.com
(I find the cars interesting since they were so advanced for their time. It’s a shame they were so ill suited for American driving conditions.)
The short-lived Plymouth Hy-Drive of around 1953-54 used a combined engine-oil lubrication system. I think oil changes were 10 or 11 quarts. A complete evolutionary dead end.
They sold a lot of them in Newfoundland, but few survived Newfoundland winters (and road salt).
When Soviet fishing trawlers docked in St. John’s, sailors bought old Ladas (from locals more than happy to be rid of them) and had them strapped to the side of the ship. Better than being stuck on a fifteen-year waiting list.
That happened in the UK too, but after the fall of the Soviet Union, at which point a decent 8 yr old Lada could be had for £150, it turned into an industry.
There were wanted ads in the papers. It’s amazing to me that the car in this Top Gear clip went for £1500 – a few years before, it would have sold for a fraction of that.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=a9SdzX44zgY
Oh there are tombs to be written about the early 90s entrepreneurs that started to re-import Ladas after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The idea was that they were a known quantity and repairable back home, that and the ones made for export were generally better finished and more carefully assembled. Conversely, people in East Germany and elsewhere couldn’t wait to unload the outdated Ladas for something like a used West-German VW/Merc/etc, and were bemused at how eagerly the Russians were buying these cheap Ladas.
Fairly quickly though, both the supply of Ladas was starting to run out, and Russians were realizing that bringing over something German/French/etc was not so scary after all in terms of servicing back home, so the business became buying anything and everything European, for which there was an insatiable demand (same applies to Poland and Belarus, etc).
I was just reading some memoirs of these early car runners, a guy from Belarus that did it for a few years, about 75% of the male population was involved in this car-running trade at some point it seems. His stories center around the rampant criminality that the car runners faced, from the train ride with money sewn into their jackets and avoiding getting robbed right there, to getting ambushed on the drive back. Sometimes it was just a “toll” to get through a certain part of the road, more ruthless criminals specifically wanted the car: until it was re-registered in the new owner’s country, it was in a legal grey area in regards to ownership. Many cases of car runners (and sometimes their spouses) found in shallow graves in the woods of Poland and Belarus and Russia.
Rather completely: the left fender would’ve unfolded over here, the hood would’ve unfolded over there, the front seat would’ve unfolded five more miles down the road, the head gasket would’ve unfolded next month and the month after that and the month after that…
That sure is a lot of folds being undone. But it keeps the folders busy I guess…
Westerners who have never been to Russia will not understand these cars, ever. Yes, they did fall apart but spares are everywhere and even my babushka can repair one with very basic tools. Try that when your modern car breaks down, and the nearest dealer is 1000 miles away. There is a very good reason why, once you get far enough from the main Russian population centers, EVERYTHING is still mechanical (or if not, uses very basic electronics) and hence self-repairable. If your wonderful Lexus breaks down (yes, even they can break down) in the US – even at the remotest of parts – mostly you get stranded for a while. If it does the same during winter in Outer Machurskaya when the nearest village is 400 miles away, you die.
Oh, I understand all of that just fine—they were cars appropriate for the time and place where they were built.
Daniel, I believe in Russia the time is still today… Same for Ural trucks and other similar steam punk (or Soviet punk?) designs going about their business all over outback Russia. I am very grateful for my ancestors for having decided to leave that place when they did.
A cheaply priced poorly built Russian ’70’s Fiat clone sold in the US, I’m sure it would have been a big success. What could possibly go wrong?
These, or some version of them, can still be seen in Russia and nearby countries on those car crash compilations on You Tube. They look scary when they wreck compared to anything that they get hit by. They just collapse into themselves when everything else has crumple zones and airbags. They are almost a different species altogether. But they must be really long-lived or kept going Cuba-style by any means available. All the other cars look modern or somewhat modern and then there’s these weird boxy things mixed in. Many of the large trucks look ancient, and I’m mostly clueless about them. I often see what must be Chinese copies of Western designs too. I started watching them because of the car variety but I admit to finding the accidents fascinating. There are levels of these though. Be careful which ones you pick to watch unless you want to see people flying off of motorcycles or catching on fire. There’s car-guy stuff and disaster-porn stuff. Does anyone else out there ever watch these things and if so, what and why?
They were still making them a decade ago. It’s less surprising than all the Oldsmobiles I see in Minnesota.
IIRC the final Lada 2107s rolled off the production line in 2011, and were eagerly snapped up. The financial crisis in 2009, and then again in 2014 where the ruble lost half its value, put some much needed wind in the sails of AvtoVAZ, UAZ, GAZ, etc. Get far enough out into the sticks, and even in JDM-obsessed Siberia old Ladas still predominate. Nothing else is quite so cheap to buy and repair. Both my grandma’s neighbors have Ladas, one with a well preserved ’98 2016 in cream, the other a mid-2000s fuel injected 2107 that replaced a 1990s 2106 that finally got too rotten to keep rewelding.
It gets better – a lot of the trucks are Chinese copies of Russian trucks. Some of the Krypto-1958 IH trucks are Chinese copies. Everybody Plays! Everybody Wins!
I used to watch crash videos to brush up on defensive driving techniques. Often the crashes involve a driver who is not at fault, but has driven in a careless manner that made them vulnerable to the idiocy of others. One can watch and learn.
I remember a dealership in Calgary, at the bottom of Edmonton trail that had a few of these rusting away well beyond their sell by date in the mid nineties. It was also a Alfa Romeo dealership. I was tempted to go in and find out if $500 would get me a pre rusted “new” Lada but never had the gumption.
I wonder what is in that location now, probably a condo building with a Starbucks…
I live in Calgary and drove by the location just a few days ago. It has been scraped bare and is for sale – I think it also had a wand style car wash on it as well back in the day. The property is ringed with a typical plywood boarded fence and it is awaiting a presumably high density residential redevelopment.. The area is undergoing a sorely needed gentrification, but considering the local and still weak oil-based economy and the surplus of almost any residential real estate (especially condo’s), it may be sitting empty for some time to come. It has already been barren of any business or buildings for quite a long time, though that exceptionally forlorn car lot did persist for many years.
They missed the real estate boom as well, as the spanky new building with the offices, condos and Starbucks is located almost directly across the street. Too bad they got the Lada franchise in in 1984, instead of Hyundai – which launched here at about the same time.
I recall about 10 years ago they were selling electric scooters out of there. Forgot about the car wash. Guess the scooters didn’t go over to well or they were ahead of the times. You are right about Hyundai. I still have a hard time getting the first gen pony out of my mind but the later ones seem to be screwed together well enough…
The dealer location in my hometown retained one of its signs until a few years ago.
These were sold in Canada until the mid-90s I think. Worked with a guy in 1991-92 who had a bevy of these and loved them, said they were so easy to repair. I remember looking at a brand new one at the Toronto Auto Show around 1995 or so and thinking they were pretty crudely finished inside. I remember climbing into the back seat of one of these and stubbing my toe on the back of the front seat track, which had sharp metal edges and no trim piece to finish it off. Luckily I was wearing running shoes at the time.
While they may have been crude they had a certain rugged Soviet charm I suppose and seemingly could cope with Canada’s harsh winter which is similar to Russia’s climate. Many other imports, like the fragile Renaults, could not.
I read somewhere that, after the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, some Canadian Lada owners were scrounging up Fiat 124 badges to avoid revenge for the invasion being taken on their cars.
Interiors seemed to be a weak point on Ladas. This Niva did not look that inviting inside either.
Not to mention the shooting down of Korean Air Flight 7 in 1983. There were gas station owners who refused to sell to owners of these, and parking garages that wouldn’t allow them in.
I used to visibly sneer at the owners of these myself.
The classic Ladas actually have pretty well put together interiors, within the context of the 1970s-1980s. The FWD Samaras that came out in the 1980s, and anything FWD that followed into the 2000s are rightly regarded as absolute rattle-traps in terms of how flimsy and crappy the interior plastics are.
All Ladas of this series had an issue with broken timing chain tensioners. The russians never eliminated this, it was a continuous flaw until very end of production (in the 90s?). Maybe people of the Eastern bloc could take care of that, were they had plenty of time and wrenchers working-hour didn’t cost that much. ( And needless to say that the writers of R&T overlooked that flaw while testing a brand new car).
There were of course other flaws, like for example the rust, but then again Suzukis of that era were even rustier, so this was not a solely communist issue.
So no. I’m sorry to spoil the party here, but Lada was no good car for half the price. It was a bad car even for its pricetag.
I didn’t notice any positives in the article, and I think, “I would not entrust my dear ones to a Lada,” is a forthright condemnation of the thing. The reviewer described it as Schizophrenic so . . not positive.
P.J. O’Rourke visited the Lada factory and wrote about it in Car and Driver and said it was the only thing that worked in a country where nothing else worked, and the Lada factory was built by Italians, and that told you everything you needed to know.
I don’t think the Soviets had the production capacity to send Ladas to the United States and because they had oil and other resources, weren’t so desperate for hard currency as to try to make a real go of it. Also they probably had no real idea how to make a real go of it.
Would it have succeeded? Much better cars tried and failed, so NO. A good one came off the line occasionally, probably earmarked for some minor official who never got it because he fell into party disgrace before it got to him, but the vast majority were crude and desperately unreliable. Even in the dark days of the 1970s, a used Dart/Valiant would go forever and be just as simple to fix and be an infinitely better car. Sovietitude being what it was, I cannot imagine it being successful.
I have a never-used original-equipment Lada headlamp in my collection. Bought it at what remained of a Lada dealership in Ontario in 2002 or so. It is very shoddy in every respect, and it wouldn’t surprise me if the homologation markings—purporting to indicate a type approval granted by France—are fraudulent. The picture is almost as shoddy as the lamp itself, but if you look carefully at the last row of characters near the bottom-centre of the lens, you’ll see СССР (USSR in Cyrillic letters). At some point in production, a vastly better (and objectively rather good) Czech-made headlamp unit supplanted the pathetic Soviet item (I’ve got a few of those, too…!).
”…itwouldn’t surprise me if the homologation markings—purporting to indicate a type approval granted by France—are fraudulent.
One of the quirks of stealing someone else’s work is that you have to copy it as exactly as you can because you have no way of knowing what’s important and what isn’t.
https://theuijunkie.com/b29-bomber-tupolev/
Hah! Reminds me of the tale of the potroast pot.
Bringing the Lada over to the U.S. at that time wouldn’t have worked. We still had some of the Fiat models it was based on around, and I think that would have been enough to make prospective buyers shop elsewhere. Not to mention the political situation. I’ve had plenty of seat time in these – the back seat in Taxi’s in Europe. Wouldn’t mind having one if the price is right. Rugged, easy and cheap to fix. The time may be soon for someone to import something like this. Better yet build it here. 4 speed stick is enough for me. Too bad Fiat doesn’t seem to see the light even now. Seems that the Ruskies really did build a better car for the world than Fiat did.