The Lada Niva needs no introduction. It’s about as closely tied to Mother Russia as vodka is. One thing the Niva isn’t known for though is a luxurious cabin. Now, it appears that at least one example has a stunning new infotainment system not seen in other examples.
Sadly, when we use the word stunning it’s not in a good way. In fact, it’s stunningly bad because it directly interferes with the driver’s ability to shift the Niva into first gear, third gear, and presumably fifth gear too. All the odd gears. Whoever designed this central control stack seems to have said “Ehh, close enough” before letting it roll off of the factory floor.
In this case, though, rolling off of the floor should’ve been a hint since the car appears barely drivable. Let’s take a quick dive into what we’ve found out so far about this somewhat viral video. Thankfully for the citizens of Russia, it might be an aftermarket mod that did this.
A Russian filmed a review of the new Lada Niva car for 1.3 million rubles ($14 340).
Russian AvtoVAZ updated the multimedia by creating a large screen, which made it impossible to change gears. The manager told him no worries, just bend the lever a bit. pic.twitter.com/YYnNgOwifG
— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) September 20, 2024
Lots of cars today have large infotainment screens. In fact, in several cases, the infotainment appears almost tacked on as if it wasn’t initially part of the design. In the case of the Niva, the integration looks quite good but that ends when one tries to use the gear shift. The video above posted to X shows the problem as clearly as one could.
The reviewer says that the car costs some 1,300,000 Rubles (Apx $14,000 USD) and that new for this year it has an updated multimedia center. Instead of sitting high atop the dash like other Ladas, this screen sits in the middle of the control stack. That in turn, led designers to move the climate controls down in the stack which is where the problem really begins.
As soon as the man behind the camera goes to shift, CLANK, the shifter shaft hits the plastic bezel. Laughing as he mocks the design, he then moves the lever over to third where the same thing occurs. “The manager says it’s nothing, you can bend the lever a little bit. People do that,” he claims.
Frankly, a bent gear shift shaft might indeed be a quick and easy solution since they already exist in cars from all over the globe. Indeed, the design appears compatible with such a shaft. As we discussed this ridiculousness in Slack, Torch chimed in to confirm some details.
“My Russian-speaking friend confirms nothing else was said that may suggest it’s a lone problem or anything.” Interestingly, Lada doesn’t have any photos of a similar interior on its website. Diving a little deeper, YouTube doesn’t appear to have a single recent video showing one like this either. Most appear to have a single-din radio space beneath the HVAC controls and no screen.
It’s plausible that the dealership or someone else installed an aftermarket multimedia infotainment center like the one found here on Amazon. Note that it matches the one in the video. The HVAC controls sit beneath the infotainment screen, the HVAC vents sit above it, and a row of buttons rest beneath the screen and above the controls.
Videos focusing on the installation of such an infotainment system abound on YouTube and indeed, they look identical. In fact, comments on these videos often call out the potential interference with the gearshift but we have yet to see a channel confirm such interference. In most cases, they simply claim that no, it doesn’t interfere and no, one doesn’t need a bent gear shift shaft to clear the bezel.
Ultimately, it appears as though the issue is one only created by those trying to improve their Lada Niva infotainment experience. Perhaps the next thing to do is to dremel some little notches into the bezel for the gear shift shaft. Or they could just add a bent shaft. That would probably be easier.
The only other car maker I could think of that would go, yeah, this is fine, is British Leyland.
Russians know how to half-ass things in ways that would make a Malaise-era Chrysler product planner blush.
I grew up in Ukraine in the 90’s and 2000’s, and old timers used to tell stories of how during the Soviet era you were better off buying a used car rather than a new car, but not for the reason you’d think.
The reason was because new cars were put together so poorly that they rolled off the assembly line either broken or possibly not even in full running condition. On the other hand, buying used meant that someone else had already gone to the trouble to fix all of the problems that the factory didn’t bother getting right.
Considering how much modern-day Russia retains the old Soviet ways of doing business, this video of a brand-new borderline undriveable Russian vehicle is probably the least surprising thing I’ve seen on the internet today.
To be fair, “Ehh, close enough” has been the motto of the Russian auto industry since Soviet times.