Soviet Era Russian Cars

[meteorite]

I was following up a link from Autoweek and ended up at a site called http://www.howtobearetronaut.com. They have photos and clusters you can get totally absorbed in - Karsh portraits, the building of the Titanic, history of cheerleading (!), you name it. And one of the clusters is a series of ads for Russian cars built primarily in the Soviet era.

The most familiar to Canadians will be the Lada, a rough and ready takeoff of the FIAT sedan of the time, and in fact built under an agreement with FIAT. It wasn't fancy, but it was tough and cheap, and a much later wagon version, the Niva with off-road capability, became a bit of a cult car. There are those who think there is still a North American demand for Russian cars, particularly the Lada, but whether it would be economic to produce the inevitably limited run that would meet current picky safety and emission regulations suggests a major deterrent.

Also brought in was the Zhiguli (actually I need a Cyrillic font to do it right) which was sold here as the Volga but being bigger and pricier was far less competitive. Another smaller car that appeared on our streets for a bit was the Moskovich but it did not catch on and soon disappeared.

Anyway, there is a whole long line of these cars on the Retronaut site, which I hope this small sampling will encourage you to visit.

Note all the western styling clichés of the period.

Volga high trim model.jpg (53.5 KiB) Viewed 5720 times

Don't recall this model being offered here.

VolgaKombi..jpg (45.87 KiB) Viewed 5720 times

The original Lada for our market.

Ladasedan1.jpg (55.89 KiB) Viewed 5720 times

A later more fashionable model,

Ladasedan2.jpg (55.1 KiB) Viewed 5720 times

This may be the one we got as the Moskovitch.

ZAZsedan.jpg (48.94 KiB) Viewed 5720 times

Remember wagons?

IZMwagon.jpg (60.42 KiB) Viewed 5720 times