Development
VAZ had made their first front-wheel drive prototype, the VAZ 1101, in the early 1970s. The engine from the Fiat 127 was used. Further development of this project led to the 900 cc "Ladoga" three-door prototype in 1976. On 31 December 1979 the first VAZ 2108 prototype was completed. During VAZ 2108 development, VAZ engineers also looked closely at a range of European competitors like the Volkswagen Golf, Opel Kadett D, Ford Escort Mark III, and Renault 9. While named "Sputnik" at home, it was more commonly known as the "Eight" after the last digit in the model code. The export version was named after the Samara River, a tributary to the Volga. The first cars left the production line on 18 December 1984.
Despite NAMI (National Automobile Institute) having allowed the involvement of Porsche engineers in the engine development, the Samara never achieved the same success as the Riva, even though it did prove to be a robust car with a modern style and an initially competitive price. Even so, it suffered from variable and often doubtful build quality and some of the uglier handling qualities that had always been associated with Lada. The car's molded plastic front grille was also a point of contention, as it was often seen to be ugly and cheap-looking; many were replaced with after-market grilles, even by Lada dealers themselves before the cars were sold.
Read more about this topic: Lada Samara
Famous quotes containing the word development:
“I’ve always been impressed by the different paths babies take in their physical development on the way to walking. It’s rare to see a behavior that starts out with such wide natural variation, yet becomes so uniform after only a few months.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)
“The experience of a sense of guilt for wrong-doing is necessary for the development of self-control. The guilt feelings will later serve as a warning signal which the child can produce himself when an impulse to repeat the naughty act comes over him. When the child can produce his on warning signals, independent of the actual presence of the adult, he is on the way to developing a conscience.”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)
“Such condition of suspended judgment indeed, in its more genial development and under felicitous culture, is but the expectation, the receptivity, of the faithful scholar, determined not to foreclose what is still a question—the “philosophic temper,” in short, for which a survival of query will be still the salt of truth, even in the most absolutely ascertained knowledge.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)