Zaporozhets, ZAZ 968A

In 1960 the con­struc­tion of a huge car plant in Ukraine was fin­ished and the new car “Zaporozhec” ZAZ-965 (later nick­named “Hump­backed”) was offered for sale. In terms of design, it was a unique car despite the numer­ous talks that it was just a replica of Volk­swa­gen “Bee­tle” and Fiat “Topolino”. This car had a hard roof (unlike Fiat) and an air-cooled engine (unlike “Bee­tle”). This small inex­pen­sive car rapidly gained high pop­u­lar­ity with peo­ple not only in the USSR but also abroad.

Zaporozhets, ZAZ 965

By the mid­dle of 1960-s the vol­ume of car pro­duc­tion was not high enough to meet the grow­ing demand. In 1966 the Soviet Gov­ern­ment issued a decree on the con­struc­tion of new car plants. The Moscow car plant was recon­structed and the vol­ume of pro­duc­tion was increased from 90,000 cars to 180,000. How­ever those were not  suf­fi­cient vol­umes and then it was decided to start devel­op­ing cars in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Ital­ian FIAT.

FIAT, ances­tor of Lada 1300 (VAZ 2101)

The first car made due to this col­lab­o­ra­tion was VAZ 2101 “Zhiguli” which was par­tially copied off the FIAT-124. Nev­er­the­less there was a suf­fi­cient dif­fer­ence between these cars. VAZ was equipped with a newer engine, brakes and rein­forced body to fit the con­di­tion of a longer-term ser­vice, which was prob­a­bly dif­fer­ent to the one in Europe. After the redesign and mod­i­fi­ca­tions the car mass pro­duc­tion had com­menced.
Almost after the pro­duc­tion was launched, the USSR stopped its col­lab­o­ra­tion with the FIAT. As the result they denied the pro­duc­tion of full replica of FIAT “Mirabell” (as sup­posed by the agree­ment) but devel­oped the unique model “Niva”.

Lada Niva

Real­is­ti­cally, the “Niva” was one the best cars ever pro­duced in the Soviet Union. This car was the real­i­sa­tion of the con­cept of a “beach crossover” which became a poster child in the rest of the world. Later ALL for­eign devel­op­ments made on the edge between real off-roader and 4WD station-wagon cars were the copies of this con­cept, ini­tially used in model VAZ-2121 “Niva” in 1977.

Lada 1600, VAZ 2106

In 1984, the Soviet engi­neers pre­sented a new fam­ily of cars under the brand “Samara” ini­tially intro­duced by VAZ-2108 (later sup­ple­mented with VAZ-2109 in 1987 and VAZ-21099 in 1992). This car was widely sell­ing in Ger­many, France, GB and Canada in large extent because of the low price (in com­par­i­son with main rivals Ford “Escort” and Toy­ota “Corolla”) and pow­er­ful eco­nomic engine.

Lada Samara, VAZ 2108

Mean­while another car plant in Soviet city Izhevsk pro­duced the con­cept model IZH-2126. This was a car of absolutely new gen­er­a­tion – equipped with auto­matic trans­mis­sion, ABS and dou­ble axle dri­ves. Nev­er­the­less the pro­duc­tion of this car started only in 1992 in a well-simplified version.

IZH-2126, Oda

At the same time in the late 1980s the car pro­duc­tion indus­try in the USSR began to lag behind  its com­peti­tors in the US and Europe. Fund­ing of the pro­duc­tion of new mod­els stopped (as it was in the planned econ­omy of the USSR), car part sup­pli­ers did not have the new  parts, and parts made were fre­quently defected. Nowa­days the car plants indus­try is mostly a legacy of the Soviet Union whereas the mod­els of the cars are still suf­fi­ciently behind their West­ern coun­ter­parts but the price ranges are sim­i­lar to the new Euro­pean cars of a far bet­ter quality.

Here and below are some of the most pop­u­lar cars in 1990 by Los Ange­les Times chart.

Mazda Miata MX 5

Lexus LS400

Pop­u­lar­ity: 49%

Related posts:

1. Soviet Cars: His­tory of the Copy-and-Paste Indus­try  —  Part 3 of 3
2. Soviet Auto­mo­bile Indus­try  —  Part 1 of 2
3. Soviet Cars: His­tory of the Copy-and-Paste Indus­try  —  Part 2 of 3
4. Soviet Cars: His­tory of the Copy-and-Paste Indus­try  —  Part 1 of 3
5. Best of Fall 2009

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