We will not miss an opportunity to lift the Lada 4×4 onto the digital stage. When Lada adds new commercial vehicle versions of the off-roader, once sold as Niva in the Netherlands, to its Russian delivery range, we will be there to show the sympathetic news fact.
Deliver parcels to a past village in Russia? Good luck. The Russian road network is just as smooth as the face of a sixteen-year-old teenager, so your four-wheeler must come from a good family to be able to endure the daily miles. Fortunately, there is Lada, the brand that left Western Europe for a while and still has the 4×4 sold since 1977, formerly called Niva, in its showrooms. Lada has been supplying versions of the 4×4 with an open body or with superstructure for years and now these four-wheel drive commercial vehicles have been modernized.
You can already feel it coming: the changes that Lada makes to the order versions of the 4×4 can be labeled as ‘marginal’. The ‘gray license plate’ 4x4s get the new interior that Lada put in the regular versions of the model last year. Of course, do not expect a modern workplace, after all, the 4×4 remains a very old model. The center console has been redesigned, but would not have been out of place in the model in the early 1990s. The somewhat ramshackle ventilation grilles of the past have been moved upwards and, like the new control panel of the climate control, are finished with rounded corners. The sliders of the climate control have been replaced by rotary knobs and the toggle switches are replaced by push buttons. Also new: the steering wheel, the canopy of the odometer gearbox and the instruments housed underneath. We even see a digital display between the analog clocks. From now on you sit on renovated furniture.
Interior Lada 4×4 (mid 90’s to 2020)
The technology is barely tinkered with, which means that the van version has leaf springs at the rear, although the rear axle can now handle a load capacity of 580 kilos instead of 490 kilos. The power source remains the well-known 83 hp 1.7.