My first Done Deal posting

[djape1977]

when talking about ladas it's important to have perspective of the time they were made. early 70's!
here's some vintage photos:

this variation never went into production


unfortunately, heither did this one - 2103 station wagon. 1600ccm. i quite like thi one.



convertible 2103. only about a dozen showcars produced. pitty.



a variation of 2106 - diferent bumpers


2106 pickup. only a prototype produced



interior of bog standard 1974. 2103 - that's real wood on the dash!




racing 2103


some serious crash testing was done even back in those days






state of the art production line


and a millionth car produced - a 2103


standard 2106 1600 from 1978.




3 million cars produced! a 2106

[djape1977]

2105 pickup


and a niva pickup

[eugene]

I saw many 2105 pick ups when i was in Ukraine.Thanks again djape for the archive photos.I hope Theo won't mind Fiat's first cousins being shown to fellow Fiat 131 enthusiasts .Eugene

[sid131]

Well i am enjoying the pics, those were grand cars so where did the lada is crap or lada is a skip names come from? i never had one myself but always thought of them as being a cheap motor.

[djape1977]

those were grand cars so where did the lada is crap or lada is a skip names come from?

sorry, but i'm lost on the meaning of that. guess that's where my english knowlege is lacking...

sure, they are cheap motors compared to european cars. on the other hand, it was the best car that you could buy in eastern europe in those days. in ex yugoslavia, in 70's and early 80's, 2101 was the same price as mk1 golf. you get a lot more car for the buck.
driving experience in lada is very simmilar to ohv mirafioris. soft suspension, quiet (for it's time)...
quite rugged cars also, most of them can survive around 200.000kms with almost no maintanance.

[sid131]

standing joke that a lada is a skip ie something thats filled with rubbish & also how do you double the value of a lada? fill it with petrol!
those were jokes i remember about ladas also similar ones about skodas.
grand cars means nice cars.

[djape1977]

oh, i thought it was something along those lines...
simmilar jokes were told about fiats also...
as far as my experience goes, russians took everything from italians, including a lack of rustproofing. somewhere until mid 80's quality was decent, then as usssr went to hell, so did the production quality. cars from 70's outlasted the cars from 80's.
also, apart from design changes, nothing was done to modernise ladas. 2107, still in production today, shares 90% of oily bits with 2101 from 1972 or , for that matter, with 1960's fiat 124. i gess it's because of general lack of funds and russian philosophy - why change anything if it works?
when 2105 appeared in 1982, it was more or less up to date design (quite simmilar to mk2 mirafiori) but underneath it was still exactly the same as fiat 124. unfortunately, they continued the production of 2105 untill 1998.

[mirafioriman]

In my memory Ladas became popular in the UK in the 80's. They had a reputation for being cheap but also poorly built and poor quality. Sounds like we got them at a bad time.

[hammerbeirne]

I remember the joke for the name FIAT was Fix It Again Tomorrow it used to annoy me Anyone remember the FSO cars and pick ups were they Russian

[djape1977]

FSO was very simmilar story to lada. fso 125 was fiat 125 but without twincam engine. they put fiat 1300/1500 engine in it. FSO polonez was, as far as the mechanics go, strange mix of fiat 1300/1500, 125 and 132.
i gues that our polish members would be much better source of information on FSO

as for the wrong time to get the ladas, typical example comes from my family: my grandfather had bought a brand new 2101 in 1972. he drove it untill his death in 1994. and had made around 250.000kms with it. he had a garage, so the car wasn't exposed to elements all the time, but it was a daily driver and backup car for whole family. snow, mud, hauling a trailer full of bricks... when he died, my father sold it and it was still running ok and bodywork was rustfree!
there's a couple things that lada actually excells in: no metter how cold or wet it is, engine always starts and  heating is excellent!

[hammerbeirne]

Thats one thing about the fiats and the ladas the engines were fairly bulletproof and there was always a good FIRE

[miro-1980]

RE FSO

The rule of thumb in Poland was that if you bought a car brand new from factory you did not just drive it/
You immediately and very carefully drove it  to your own mechanic and he would tighten all the crews  and bolts , to make sure the car is safe to drive. Without it you risked your front suspension to come a part, wheels dropping off, steering becoming disintegrated  on the first curve and the main shaft dropping on you while driving ..

 Interesting though is the reason for this:

In those years a large portion of the workers at FSO were convicts , taken from prison daily and driven back to prison after work    

Miro

PS : once your mechanic went over it , it was a pretty reliable car with mileage up to 300 000 km without rebuilding...  

[djape1977]

hmmmm...
my father had bought brand new fso 125p 1500 in 1978. in 1982, and with 80.000mks on the clock, engine was consuming about a litre of oil per 1000kms, gearbox was getting noisy, and rust spots started appearing. rust was patched up, car repainted, engine and gearbox scrapped and replaced with 1608 dohc and 5 speed box from crashed 125 special. after that he drove it for couple more years untill he bought argenta. i guess nobody told him about the convicts working in the factory...

[david]

A friend of mine worked in a Lada dealership in uk in the 1980s and he told me they had  to change all of the tyres on the cars before they could sell them as they werent up to EU standard, there were two other things they had to change but I cant remember what

[djape1977]

russian tyres are horrible. hard as a rock. will probably last for 100.000kms if you don't crash before. slippery as glass. i guess batteryes and wiper blades also