Lada Niva appreciation thread
>>29014439drove one of these once and it fucking sucked
Lost opportunity due to backwards thinking https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-9DZ4OcZ28
>>29014439niva is cute! cute!
Americans must love nivas because they're still making 2 valve per cylinder SOHC engines in 2026
Luv me Niva.It fucking sucks, but I love the way it sucks. It's a constant presence that is always there when all else fails, it'll get you where you need to be and back. You'll be late by an hour and it'll leave you stuck on the side of the road every now and then just to keep you on your toes, but it'll always fire right back up after giving you a scare and get you home.
>>29015460that's called a third world mindset
>>29015756true it needs more apple car play and planned obsolecense
>>29015760Yes. shouldn't you be in a muddy ditch in ukraine dying to a $50 drone btw?
>>29015849I'm not ukrainian, so no.
>>29015849Fucking dumbass mutts
There's a Cossack for sale for 5500 bong bucks. There's some rust but I'd be lying if the thought hasn't crossed my mind.And the guy that imports Nivas here will be back with Azeri made ones soon.
2022/23 can be had as new for about £20k.Oddly imports after 2022 dried up.
>>29016210For 5 grand I'd expect it to be clean as fuck.They tend to get rusty in the rockers, but one very important place is the rear axle support beam wedge box thingy in the floor. I think they're officially called trailing arm bracket mounts, but whatever the fuck they're called, they tend to rot out and cause the rear axle to move back and forth.I cut the old ones out and redid them from 3mm plates, slapped them with a "that ain't going anywhere" for good measure.Pic related are some aftermarket boxes made from 3mm plate too
>>29015960no but you're russian and i heard that when you inevitably ACK in ukraine, your family gets gifted a few packs of cheetos and dishwasher soap
>>29016341Some contracts get your "family" more Rubles than you can shake a stick at so much so that marrying conscripts is a fun way to make money.
>>29016341
>>29015849im not even russian you retard
>>29016358McDonald's grease isn't an ethnicity
>>29016373It is now.
>>29016348>marrying conscripts is a fun way to make moneyLMAO
>>29016341>and i heard thatWhere? CNN? Stupid mutt goblin.
>>29015849russia living rent free in your nafo trannies veganas
>>29014439Mogged by the ultimate shitbox
People who drove it as a company car said it sucked on and off road. Bottom of the barrel car.
>>29017382I believe that part of the criteria for being a shitbox is being cheap, and Defenders are not fucking cheap in the slightest anymore, with even battered farm spec wagons fetching north of 6 grand in some cases. No, the *true* Land Rover shitbox is the humble Tdi Discovery~
>>29017382>fatfuck body on frame>>29017408it's good at specific kinds of offroad, and can be modified to handle morelight weight, good angles and low range box make it unbeatable on loose rocky terrain, but stock tires are no good for mudding
>>29016981>russia living rent freeNo, Russians are dying courtesy of your own oligarchs seized assets
>>29015460This is thirdie cope.
>>29017860So when it's an old Alfa Romeo or Fiat that you're supposed to love for being a bit of a lovable bitch, you call it soul, but when it's russian it's suddenly thirdie cope? You are supposed to be car guys, a car that you get to wrench on is a good thing.
>>29017863"Russian" cars are cloned inferior copies of outdated Italian designs, and no I think Italian or any western car should be mocked if it's shit. And your logic of "it may break down and strand you, but that make it reliable at heart!" is pure nonsensical retardation.
>>29017873What's the niva a copy of? How about the GAZ-24 Volga?
>>29017873NTANot necessarily. Classic Ladas are Fiats adapted to actually survive in russian climate, in many ways they are actually superior. FWD Ladas are entirely homegrown until the french came, after that they get kitbashed with Logan and Altima parts. Volgas are largely homegrown, they have a lot of old truck DNA in them but so do most american body-on-frame cars (and Volgas aren't even BoF so they are more car than smth like Crown Vic). Niva is kitbashed from the not-Fiat to be an inexpensive people's offroader, all the modifications that had to be done to facilitate it are homegrown. Various lesser critters like Zaporozhets and Moskvitch are more often than not inspired by but not directly copied from western designs. They are not reliable by default, they are fixable, and the rule is that every time you fix them you gotta make the fix stronger than the original part. At some point you put enough care and ingenuity into them that they stop breaking in a way that strands you, because you've reinforced or found quick fixes for every problem part. Yes, that does mean that some normally long-lasting parts become wear items, but the solution is to just stock on them and replace as needed.
>>29017892>What's the niva a copy of?A dumpster >How about the GAZ-24 Volga?Ford Falcon
>>29017897Niva is the grand daddy of all crossovers.If memory serves it's the first unibody crossover.The japs copied it to make the Suzuki whatever
>>29017897>They are not reliable by default, they are fixable, and the rule is that every time you fix them you gotta make the fix stronger than the original part. At some point you put enough care and ingenuity into them that they stop breaking in a way that strands you, because you've reinforced or found quick fixes for every problem part. Yes, that does mean that some normally long-lasting parts become wear items, but the solution is to just stock on them and replace as needed.So they're crap. Thanks for clarifying. Russia 0 USA 1.
>>29017899Jimny is not a Niva copy, it's body on frame. The closest things to Niva for a long while were Panda 4x4 and the various early Subarus, until actual crossovers like Rav4 and CR-V came around. >>29017901Yes, by default. You have to bond with them to make them not crap, but then they'll never fail you, you can anticipate and preemptively prevent every breakdown. Compare to a Honda that will work flawlessly for 20 years and then catastrophically fail in a way that totals the car. A Niva is never totalled because it costs nothing to fix even when it's totally fucking fucked, the only thing that'll bring it down is rust but it's got metal thrice the thickness of said Honda and neither of them have any rust prevention whatsoever so it'll claim all eventually.
>>29017910>Yes, by default. You have to bond with them to make them not crap, but then they'll never fail you, you can anticipate and preemptively prevent every breakdown. Compare to a Honda that will work flawlessly for 20 years and then catastrophically fail in a way that totals the car.This is absolutely retarded cope. Hondas will last you a long time with no issues from the factory and are still cheap to fix once something happens after 20 years. You're a coping third worlder performing mental gymnastics to excuse his vehicles short comings.
>>29017923The guy who started this chain literally opened with "it sucks but I like the way it sucks". We all know they are flawed, but you can live with those flaws, and some even find those flaws fun. Look at bikers. Bikes objectively suck compared to cars, but people still subject themselves to them because they like the ways they suck. Same here, except it's bliss of having an excuse to regularly wrench and solve problems rather than misery of eating bugs and getting soaked on a bike.
>>29017932Cool, it's still objectively shit and there are better options by every metric.
>>29017932My good drone feed man. They are shit. You can buy them in Mexico. You can have a 4x4 Nissan Kicks or a base model VW Jetta for less money. The Kicks can actually go offroad if you don't do the CVT and the Jetta is infinitely more comfortable and well optioned. The Niva is just a bad old design hampered by Soviet limitations. The Latam equivalent would likely be the VW Saveiro which is cheaper, better tech, equally as easy to fix, more comfortable and more reliable. Take the L. The Niva is objectively ass.
>>29017932>>29017910just understand a lot of those nivas in ex-USSR countries get scrapped for cheap 10-30 year old rhd japanese offroaders (pajero, land cruiser prado, terrano/patrol, vitara/jimny) that are an upgrade in every possible way, 20 year old german suvs imported from europe/america with 200k+ miles (x3/x5, mercedes ML), or the humble toyota prius. cheap used car imports from japan make ex-ussr crap not worth it. those old nivas have a hard time even going 100 km/h for a extended time
>>29017940Not really? It's still the only small, simple, short wheelbase crossover with actual AWD and low range and not a hodgepodge of viscous couplings and imitaiton diffs made to sell to karens thinking they NEED awd for winter. Jimny is the closest thing, but it's considerably smaller and is body on frame (so even smaller on the inside), and everything else is much bigger and more overbuilt. >>29017950There's a good reason Golf Country didn't catch on. Transverse FWD-based crossovers kinda suck at actually offroading, not much better than the hatches they are based on, while being considerably worse on the road. Niva trades all of the on-road performance for being actually competent offroad. It genuinely sucks as a road car, but that's the price of minmaxing.
>>29017958>those old nivas have a hard time even going 100 km/h for a extended timeBecause their designed top speed is 60kmh.They were never intended to go faster than that.
>>29017962Wasn't the jimmy also toggleable AWD, whereas the Niva is full time AWD with a transfercase lock standard, thr jimmy havibg electronic diff locks as option
>>29017974>>29017969the other problem is its not soupy siberia most of the time where people livesomething like a 15 year old ex-usa salvage title mercedes ml350 or 20 year old porsche cayenne 3.2 v6 is a lot better car even if you are in those placesprius/hybrid is also very popular due to their low-temp capabilities (mongolia is 70% prius)
>>29017979>mercedes ml350 or 20 year old porsche cayenne 3.2 v6these fuckers break just as often as niva does, but you can't fix them with a hammer, a bottle of vodka and kuzya's mother
