The Lada Riva is a 2-door Pickup truck / pickup / 4-door sedan (car) / saloon / 5-door station wagon / estate from Lada, built from 1980 to 2012, in the age of turbocharging and the first electronic engine management. Under the bonnet: Petrol engine.
How it came about
The Lada / VAZ-2105, 2104 and 2107, collectively marketed as Lada Riva for right-hand drive models (in the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand), the Lada Nova in Germany, and by multiple other names and markets, are a series of compact sedans of the Zhiguli line-up (Fiat 124-based cars), built by Russian car manufacturer AvtoVAZ (formerly VAZ). Introduced in 1979 in the Soviet Union, and progressively introduced to Western European and global markets from the early 1980s, under the Lada brand, they were sold as saloons (2105 and 2107), and station wagon (2104) versions.
Today they are generally referred to as the Lada Classic series, being derived from the original Fiat 124 platform which has been the now-iconic mainstay of the AvtoVAZ lineup since the company's foundation in the late 1960s. Russian production at the company's main plant at Tolyatti ended in September 2012. Along with the other Fiat 124 derivatives, it is the world's third best selling, single generation automobile platform, after the Volkswagen Beetle and the Ford Model T, and one of the longest production run platforms alongside the Volkswagen Beetle, the Hindustan Ambassador, the Volkswagen (Type 2) Bus, the Toyota 70 Series, and the Mercedes-Benz G-Class.
The hardware
Power comes from Petrol engine; other versions carried different engines, listed in the specification table below. It weighs 1030 kg. It shifts through a 4/5-speed Manual transmission / manual / 4-speed Automatic transmission / automatic. The layout matters: a front engine drives the rear wheels, the classic proportion — long bonnet, cabin set back — that most people picture when they picture a sports saloon or a grand tourer. The wheelbase is 2424 mm. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Family and rivals
Its family tree is legible: it took over from the VAZ-2101 / VAZ-2102 / VAZ-2106; its successor was the VAZ-2109 / VAZ-2110 / VAZ-2111; assembly was at Tolyatti. Its contemporaries in the catalogue — the Audi Quattro, the Dodge Ram, the Lancia Delta — show what else the money bought that year. Its Lada stablemates include the LADA Granta and the LADA Kalina.
What it costs now
There is no federal ownership record for the Lada Riva — it predates the complaint database or was never sold in the United States — so MotorJury publishes no running-cost figure for it. For a car of this age the price is set by the collector market and the condition of the individual example, not by a formula.