The Lada Riva - the Soviet "Tank" that Invaded Britain

Erratum: Smirnoff vodka is a western product, not Russian.

I had a Lada in the 1980s because it was the only car I could afford to buy new. 12 years and 150 thousand miles later it was still going strong. Unfortunately it then became impossible to find spare parts so I bid it a tearful farewell. Every car I have had since has never been as reliable as my Riva. Yes, it was like a tank to drive and (as a small woman) I got some impressive biceps! But I always felt very safe. I'm 65 now and I still miss my old tank.

A Lada was our first car when we got married, it was a fantastic little car, we went camping all over UK in it and it never let us down once. In winter it was bulletproof just ploughed through the snow.

I always remember back to the early 90's my snooty next door neighbour had a brand new Sierra and the guy next to him had a Lada. I think it was a Riva 1300, he had a few problems and was always tinkering under the bonnet. The Sierra guy used to come and jump in and turn the key and smile thinking it was funny that his car started and the Lada was stuck there. A year or so later we had a bad winter with deep snow and really cold weather, the Sierra guy came out and the car just went clunk and wouldn't start (flat battery i guess) but the Lada just started as usual and he gave the Sierra guy a BIG smile. I never laughed so much in all my days. I will take that image to my grave.

People used to joke back in the 80's how good Lada was: you buy a new car, completely disassemble it and then put it all back together properly, throw away what's not needed too. Those Ladas were fantastic cars, totally repairable with almost no tools, like AK! And it was so wobbly with such a smooth far late action steering,, it's amazing, such a soft enjoyable car. Very warm memories

I have a friend in Brasil, he was a rally driver for Lada there. All other teams arrived with trucks and motorhomes. he and the Lada Team mechanics would arrive driving their Ladas, run the Rally and at the end drive the same car going back home in Sao Paulo....LEGEND!!!

My dad bought a used '81 Lada 1500S, as a second car when he retired in '82. It was an odd little car from the start and seemed particularly plagued with electrical issues, flaky switches, dim and burnt out light bulbs, blown fuses, failure to charge the battery etc. Dad grew tired of it's 'personality' after a year or two and replaced it with a Chevy. The Lada's ownership fell to me, perhaps as market value was slim to none at the time. I took it on as a (second car for the wife) project. I found various service facilities offering Lada expertise. I took it to several. One quoted me more than the car was worth for some fix or other. When I pointed out the value proposition and said that I'd scrap the car instead, he phoned me back a half hour later with a "revised", lower by half, quote. None of the "Lada" shops seemed to have any good handle on the endemic electrical issues. New replacement Lada brand parts like alternators showed little sign of being any better than those they replaced. On about the third alternator replacement, instead of trying yet another OEM part, I took the old part to a one man band alternator / starter re-builder and asked "what can you do with one of these?" He told me that he could likely reverse engineer and rebuild it as a custom order but recommended instead that it would be cheaper to buy and adapt one of his bread and butter rebuilt GM alternators. He explained that the electronics he used in the rebuild worked so well that there was usually enough residual magnetism in the rotor itself so that the excitation connection could be left disconnected and yet the alternator would still work just fine. He did a quick demo on his test bench which seemed convincing. Nothing much to loose, so I did as he suggested. It took a bit of work, and a few favours called in, to fabricate a special bracket and a shoe horn to get the larger unit mounted up, but all was soon in place. When I started the car, initial disappointment as the ammeter showed battery not charging at all and I thought it was all for naught but when I revved up past 1500 rpm, I guess the "residual magnetism" effect reached some critical threshold and the alternator suddenly jumped to life showing charging current on the ammeter like I had never seen before! Once it came to life it kept on charging well, even when back at idle. That 1500 rpm kick was only needed once to get going each time you started the engine. Thereafter, headlights & lighting were brighter, the mysterious switch & fuse issues cleared up, the engine just ran better, even the horn sounded more manly and the car became fun to drive and super reliable, summer or winter. That rebuilt GM alt breathed life into that car that it never had before. It always retained that characteristic no charge till you revved up idiosyncrasy, but WTF, I could live with that. It became a useful second car from then on. I used the old thing into the '90's to commute to work an hour each way, my wife used it to go shopping and to ferry the kids about winter & summer the old Lada handled it all from then on. Boxy and straight up and down as it was, I enjoyed driving it and it had a very forgiving transmission, which I learned to shift w/o clutch both up and down the gears (never quite mastered that so well in any of my subsequent Japanese cars). Body rust eventually killed the poor old thing. By the end, the drivers door panel was flapping in the breeze, trunk floor holed in several places and she had a few bruises underneath where a shop had tried to lift the car on a hoist, only to have the frame members collapse under the stress due to weakening by rust. I drove her to the scrapers at speed, still full of piss and vinegar, still up for anything & ready and willing to go anywhere do anything. I think I got $40 for her. I have to admit, it brought (& still brings) a tear to my eye. All things considered, I liked the old thing. Hope this is of interest. Cheers from Canada.

As a Russian, Moscovit, I was born in 1980. We have never had Lada in 80s. Not affordable for family with 6 kids. Thank you for such a deep history tour. I was involved in new Lada history, worked for international producer of stainless tubes and rolled steel for production of exhaust systems for Russian Ladas Kalina, Granta (also as Datsun on-do and mi-do), XRay, plus Ford Focus, Explorer, Volga Siber(ex-Chrisler Sebring), UAZ Patriot, Lada branded Dacia, Renault Logan and Sandero, GM Chevrolet Niva(shown in your video shortly), Skoda Octavia, VW Polo and Tiguan, Mercedes Viano 2007-2015. It was intense and interesting period of my life. All these plants and their Tier 2 suppliers were built in Russia, had nice business even after 2014... Half of us, employees were cut in 2015 and I worked for company produced additional equipment for cars 2016-2020. Unfortunately, all closed now. Poor workers of these car plants, I do not know where they work now.

Our family had several, very popular in Britain for a while. I had a Riva, my parents had an older model. Very tough cars. People mock them but for the Siberian potholed roads they were designed for they could go places other cars wouldn't last. They had worm and peg steering, too, not rack and pinion, so heavy steering feel but the wheel would never get snatched out of your hands if you hit a pothole or kerb. Bodywork was so thick I never had any rust problems despite heavy road salt use, and 42 amp alternator meant it started in even the coldest weather no problem. Mine even had wipers and water squirters on the headlights, which was almost unheard of then ( and still rare now ). I could park it in even the roughest council estates and it would never be stolen or vandalised. It would do a ton on the motorway, though admittedly it took a long time to get there, and the 0..60 time needed a calendar, not a stopwatch. It was also really simple to do basic maintenance on, you could almost get into the engine compartment and shut the bonnet on top of you, there was enough room around the engine. Mine only let me down once, which turned out to be simple electric connection problem to the starter, which was fixed with a simple piece of wire and a switch ( also made it even more thief proof if you didn't know where I'd put that switch to turn the car on ). Oh, and the heater was incredible - far better than my weak 2020 Honda heater, it was hot enough to burn yourself on if you wanted, obviously designed for Russian winters. You could probably cook with it. Ran on the cheapest fuel, too. The only real problem I had ( apart from that one electric issue ) was the glue on the window winders was rubbish, and the glass dropped down into the doors. So I pulled them up with pliers, then hammered wedges in on the inside to chock them in place permanently - worked for me, and the driver's window still worked for winding down to pay tolls etc, so the other 3 didn't matter to me. Then years later a bunch of guys started buying up every Lada in Britain to take back to Russia for profit, I like to think my car is out there somewhere still providing transport for someone...

The lada has an anti-theft system: they made the logo bigger

My dad grew up with a Lada. It never let him down. Cheap reliable

You forgot to mention the primary reason why the exterior remained pretty much the same throughout the years - you cannot improve upon perfection!

They are simple and tough. A friend of mine in Egypt has one. He bought it as a student in Belgium 25 yesrs ago and then shipped it back to Egypt. He still uses it as his daily runner on the atrocious roads there.

My dad had 6 or 7 of these before as well as a Samara. It's a tank. This car holds a special place in my heart ❤️

As a Russian I'm pretty impressed by the amount of sources you've found. Still, there are some mistakes: - You completely forgot to mention another important soviet car - Moskvitch, that filled the gap between Lada and Volga. BTW, there was a serious competition between Moskvitch and Lada factories on getting new equipment with Lada winning the "administrative war" in 1974. - As far as I know there were no serious intents to produce VW cars. The Renault history was much more difficult: NAMI (car researching institute) was voting for this car being the best but political reasons finally won. - The Wankel engin WAS actually mass-produced since the mid-90's to 2006.

Ziguli was many years top 1 in car sales here in Finland. Cheap reliable easy to maintain. It just needed new steering wheel and western tires :) With 1.2L OHC chaindrive engine it was real winter car too :) 7:47 picture is from Helsinki :)

Very good summary. I still have my 1988 Riva. It now has 200,000 miles and is mostly original. Still does 8000rpm without complaint, still can be driven flat out for hours on end. Oil consumption negligible, fuel consumption very respectable. Maintenance costs almost nil, breakdowns unheard of and just occasionally, I have to chase it round the workshop with a MIG welder.

in serbia this one guy made a Lada Riva review and basically said this: this is a car that drove on piss poor smuggled romanian gasoline sold by the bottle on the roadside, which got by with an oil change every 50.000km. they did spend a bit fuel but you could overload them, it didnt matter they went all the same. if you did this with any modern car, you'd be looking at an engine rebuild at least. my friends father (afghan) still wants one. and he lives in Netherlands. and then there's curious case of my parents, driving a Lada flat out 150km/hour to another side of then Yugoslavia to pick me up from my grandparents just as war was starting. if Lada was shit, it wouldn't have survived being driven 150 for 6-8 hours straight, and same back. ladas are good.

Anyone who can make the Lada Riva story so interesting is a genius in my book!

A work colleague back in the 90s drove us from the North down to London and back in his Lada Riva. Excluding rest breaks and Birmingham gridlock it was 90mph all the way. My feelings were a mixture of fear at how safe that might be and impressed surprise that the Riva could do it.