We’ve already had some good Lada Niva content on the site today, so we may as well add a little more, right? Why not? What could it hurt? This isn’t particularly hard-hitting Niva content, but rather some things I noticed on the Lada Niva website while assisting in some research. I thought at first some of this may be due to web browser automatic translation issues, but no, this is Lada’s English language version of their site. So, while language issues could still certainly be a factor, it’s not just bad machine translation.
I should also mention that, while I’m not exactly a huge fan of Russia as a country at this precise moment in history, I do have a lot of fondness for the Lada Niva, flaws and all. Actually, maybe especially because of the flaws. I find these really appealing little practical and rugged off-roaders, and when I drove one back in 2015, I fell in love with the miserable shitbox:
“But all that is just the fundamental essence of this car. Somehow, Lada has managed to make something that’s both shoddy and rugged, all at the same time. I don’t really fully understand how this is even possible, since you’d think those two qualities would cancel each other out. But, mind-bindingly, they don’t.
This car makes you feel that, simultaneously, you could pretty well tear it apart with your bare hands and it can somehow conquer any horrible road condition or rough terrain you can throw at it. How can that be? The Niva is a massive enigma, packed into a boxy white case.
I got to drive this Niva for about two days, over a pretty wide variety of terrain, from downtown Reykjavik to the big, open, lonely highway to Keflavik, to back roads so icy they were better suited to Zamboni travel, to rough, slushy, rocky, backroads that were really only roads in that they were places on the ground you could try to drive.
The Niva managed to do everything in pretty much the same coarse, noisy, yet capable way without any real trouble.
…
The Niva is what it is, it’s terrible and wonderful, archaic and adequate, shoddy and rugged. It’s confusing and ridiculous and practical and fantastic and I’d totally drive one.”
I meant all of that then, and I still stand by it now.
Lada has half-assedly attempted to update the Niva and make it appealing to modern people who aren’t masochistic loons like myself, and I think the result of that are these strange-seeming things I found on the website. I think a lot of the weirdness comes from some misguided attempt to make the Niva seem, um, super-tough or intimidating? Like this:
For the “BLACK” edition (which for some reason uses the English word) the motto here is “the severity of the lines in each letter?” What the hell does that even mean? Also… “capacious?” That mostly just means, like, “roomy.” Is that the “very essence” of the Niva (well, the old-style one is now “Niva Legend.”)?
Also, “B” doesn’t have severe lines. It looks like a butt.
Sticking with the concepts of black and some strange idea of toughness, apparently a black headline “creates a strict style.” Strict? Do people want strictness from their, um, headliners? I’m just happy when they don’t sag.
Also, I love this: they finally gave the Niva power windows a few years back but somehow they still couldn’t be bothered to make a new inner door panel that doesn’t still have the old window crank hole? I know they had power windows for at least five years now. You’d think that’d be enough time to get someone to mold some new plastic, right?
Okay, calling wheels “disks” is fine, that’s no biggie, but “decorating a true conquerer of the environment” is some absolutely hilarious copywriting. Even accounting for lingustic challenges, the whole concept is silly.
On a more practical level, it’s nice to see that the trunk has a “convenient hinged door” which is definitely convenient. I mean, sure, we can laugh, but the Corvette didn’t have one of those until 1982. Also, far better than an unhinged door.
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen the “rotating handles” part of an HVAC system touted as a big feature, and I’m really not sure what a “dampers” heater is. It’s not any sort of suspension damper. It also has the unfortunate association with “damp” which makes me thing the method used to get heated seats in a Niva is hot water from the radiator is pumped into the seat cushions and oozes out through strategically-placed holes.
This is all weird stuff, but I can’t stay mad at the Niva.
Working on LandRover Defenders taught me the difference between rugged and reliable.
Rugged means you fix it with a hammer, reliable means you don’t have to fix it at all.
This causes a lot of confusion for people who own a broken Defender, which is all of them.
JLR have recognised this as a problem and so have made the new Defender less rugged.