Those Russian Fiates look like pretty sturdy cars. Since they are such an old platform, they must have all the bugs worked out.
Can you still buy them in Canada? What is the spare parts situation?
Why do Ladas have heated windscreens?
So your hands don’t get cold when you’re pushing them
Ladas were popular for a time in the eighties because they were inexpensive. However, they weren’t the most reliable of cars, and became something of a joke (think Yugo, but not as extreme). This was right before the Hyundai Pony arrived, which displaced the Lada at the bottom end of the market; it was also inexpensive and proved to be very popular for a couple of years.
I have not seen a new-ish Lada in Canada in the last 5-10 years. They are uncommon enough that I circled my bike around for a second look when I saw an old one parked on the street a couple of weeks ago. By all accounts they were prone to breaking down, and were very much the bottom of the barrel of cars, great for " Yeah, I had to crawl under the frame ever time I started it and jam the muffler back on" -type stories. **Ms. Attack **had one, and her stories are never of the indestructible, stalwart, I-loved-that-car type.
Incidentally, the Honda Fit has the bugs worked out and is pretty cheap.
Here’s a thread on a Lada message board that says that there are very few places in Canada selling spare parts:
http://ladausa.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1386&sid=5f8ec2575001f0339b0a783b5539abf5
We used to call them the only biodegradable car because of their rust problem 
Hyundai’s actually fairly remarkable, not that they were terrible when they started exporting vehicles out of South Korea, but that they managed to right the ship so quickly. Fifteen years after the disastrous Hyundai Excel (the first Hyundai in the United States) was introduced, Hyundai had a fair-to-decent reputation as quality goes. Ten years after that, and they’re right up there with your Hondas and your Toyotas, maybe even superior to them.
As far as I know, Fiat has not fared as well in improving their vehicles. I guess we in the U.S. will see, once the Chrysler/Fiat union starts to bear fruits.
So you want to buy a Russian copy of a decades old FIAT design, and you think it will be reliable?
BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!
::: Rick catches his breath and wipes the tears of laughter from his eyes.:::
You do know that FIAT stands for Febble Italian Attempt at Technology, right? And you do know that the Russians are not exactly world class at making consumer products, right? So you have the world’s shittiest consumer product producers, copying the world’s shittiest car.
::: Rick loses it all over again and falls on the ground laughing:::
No, FIAT stands for Fix It Again, Tony.
Or at least it used to: the new-ish Fiat 500 is actually pretty good.
The British show Top Gear did a review of “communist cars”, of which the Lada was one that they reviewed. To show the changes that the Russians made to the Fiat design, Jeremy Clarkson pounded on it with a hammer, showing how thick and heavy the steel was.
Other comments that Jeremy had:
They replaced the excellent disk brakes with drums, which were worse.
The heaviest part of the car was not the nuclear bunker body work, it was the steering. I actually believe it is set in concrete.
In fact, the only good thing about this car is that you can drive it in a hat.
The rear brakes were made from aluminium. The must have thought “Ah-ha! There you see? That’s very advanced. The West hasn’t thought of this.” There’s a very good reason for that, though. Aluminium has the same braking properties really as cheese.
Jeremy drove the car around for a bit, demonstrating its poor handling, and even yelled “Stop you bitch!” when demonstrating the Lada’s braking power (or lack thereof).
So my reaction when I read that the OP wanted one was somewhat long the same line as Rick’s.
Fiat was always Fix It Again, Tony around here.
They used to sell Lada’s here in Colombia, but they were so bad that they quit importing them.:eek: