A Soviet car factory built a whole town named after an Italian communist
In 1966 the Soviet government teamed up with Fiat to build a vast car plant on the banks of the Volga. A new town grew up around it and was named Tolyatti, after Italian Communist Party leader Palmiro Togliatti. Its first cars were rebadged Fiat 124s, and the Lada it produced became one of the longest-lived designs in motoring.
The Volga Automotive Plant, or VAZ, was meant to supply a people's car in the spirit of the Citroën 2CV or Volkswagen Beetle, meeting growing Soviet demand for personal transport. Its cost was estimated at $800 million in 1970. The first badges, made in Turin, showed a silver Volga boat on a red background with the town's name in Cyrillic, but a mistake turned one letter into a Latin R, making those early emblems collector's items.
The first car, the VAZ-2101, rolled off the line on 22 April 1970, timed for the 100th anniversary of Lenin's birth, before the plant was even finished. Output climbed fast: a third assembly line added in October 1974 lifted it to 2,230 cars a day, and by 1975 the plant produced 750,000 cars a year, making it the world's third most productive. A 1973 Chicago Tribune article called it ultra-modern, and Fiat used it to trial automation it planned for its own factories.
In 1977 the company launched its first fully home-grown design, the VAZ-2121 Niva, a rugged off-roader with a lockable centre differential and high and low gear ranges. The VAZ-2105 family, sold abroad as the Riva or Laika, became the third-best-selling car platform ever, behind only the Beetle and the Ford Model T. VAZ even built Wankel rotary engines under licence from 1978, mostly for police cars, until 2004.
The 1984 Samara range brought front-wheel drive, and a 2108 became the ten-millionth Lada in October 1986. The classic Fiat-based 2107 finally ended in April 2012, after more than 40 years in production.
Source: AvtoVAZ
