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The Names & Logo
"Lada"
isn't actually the name of a car maker at all, but an invented name by Volga's
Togliatti AvtoVaz factory to sell it's cars under in the West. It was derived
because it is pronounced a similar way in all languages, has no sexual connotations
and can be written in both the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets.
The Niva is called a VAZ-2121, BA3-2121 or HNBA
in Russia. HNBA means 'Field' in Russian. The
"Niva" name was created for the Western market, and is presumably
named after the Niva river in same region as the AvtoVaz plant (lucky the
Volga name was already taken :) ).
The AvtoVaz and Lada logo is a Viking ship (much like the Rover logo).
Biggest One-roof Auto-maker In the Word
When the Tolyatti/Togliatti plant (named after Palmiro Togliatti, a leader of the Italian Communist Party) was built it was the largest car factory in the world (and probably still is today; in 2008 the factory was the biggest per-factory volume output in Europe). The whole factory takes up 600 acres with 400 buildings and has over 300km of assembly line. Also it was the only factory where virtually 100% of the car was made in the same factory.
Nivas have also been assembled (mostly from kits from Togliatti) in Greece, Ecuador, Uruguay and Egypt, and are currently (as of 2009) assembled in Kazakhstan and the Ukraine.
First to the North Pole
Despite what Clarkson claims about his Toyota being the first road vehicle to drive to the Pole, it was in fact done many years earlier by Lada Nivas. Sort of.
In 1998 a Niva was dropped by parachute and finished the track by its own. In 1999 a Niva Marsh was driven to the Pole.
In January 2000 a
standard Niva Marsh (VAZ-1922) reached the North Pole without any modification.
It was driven by two Russians from research base about 114 km from the Pole.
They say that the Marsh behaved perfectly, maintaining an average speed of 20-15
Km/h in an average temperature of -30ºC.
Sure, it was a Niva Marsh (a Russian made Niva monster truck
on a UAZ 466 chassis) and not a Niva per se; but then you could
buy a Marsh off-the-shelf from VAZ - unlike Clarkson's modified Hilux. More
info 
.
Nivas are also one of the few cars that can be found on all five continents; Nivas were used at Russia bases in Antarctic. There's also an unconfirmed and unlikely claim that a Niva was at the South Pole in 1992 (surely also a Marsh if true).
Highest ascent by a motor vehicle
Nivas held the world
record for altitude climbed by a vehicle. In 1998, a team with Lada Nivas drove
to 5,200 meters altitude to to base camp on Mount Everest.
On the 16th of September 1999 at 2:30 in the afternoon, the Extreme Expedition
team of St. Petersburg extended this record taking 3 Nivas to an altitude of
5,726 meters, on the Tibetan Plato in Himalayas.
This record stood
until 2005 when specially prepared Volkswagen Touaregs reached an altitude of
6,080 meters in Chile. More
info .
Rally-Raid Champion
The Niva was an outright winner in many off-road racing rallys in the early to mid-'80s including outright wins on the Algerian Off-road Rally, Rally of the Summit, Rally of Tunisia, Atlas Rally, Baja Espana Aragon, the Paris 24, Cameroon Rally, Baja Hungry, Hungarian Raid Rally, 3 times Australian Off-Road Championship winners, a 1-2-3 in the Australian Wynn's Safari, a 1-2-3 in the Rally of the Pharaohs - and the first ever world rally raid championship title.
Only outright victory
on the the Paris-Dakar eluded the Niva - though it achieved over a dozen
stage wins and several podium finishes. A VFTS turbo powered Niva, Lada
Poch 1800, scored 3rd overall in the Dakar in 1981 (BRIAVOINE/DELIAIRE),
and 2 litre Poch Nivas finished the Dakar 2nd overall in 1982 (BRIAVOINE/DELIATRE)
and 1983 (TROSSAT/BRIAVOINE), and a Niva just missed
podium with a 4th in 1986 (LARTIGUE/GIROUX). Jacky Ickx
gave up his Porsche to drive the 1987 Dakar with a 290hp Simca based F2 engined
Niva ROC. More
info 1 info
2 info
3 and Australian
victories.
Click to download a Niva Rally-Raid Champion tribute sticker.
Various hybrid Nivas have succeeded in other forms of off-road racing, including a mid-engined Ferrari powered Niva and a twin Yamaha R1 engined Niva.
The Niva was still used on the Dakar until the mid '90s, and was homologated for international racing in T1 class until at least 2006.
A Niva won the USSR 1983 off-road autocross championship.
Nivas also have a
good record in 4x4 trials, and have won many European and South American trials,
more
info .
Hippopotamus vs Crocodile?
From what I can make out in Russia the original 3-door Niva is nicknamed Hippopotamus and the longer 5-door Crocodile.
Hippo disguised as a crocodile?
Lada Rotary Engine
In the late '70s
and early '80s AvtoVaz produced a 115/140hp Wankel rotary engine that is very
similar in format to the Mazda rotary. It was fitted to various VAZ and GAZ
cars, but not the Niva (except Marsh) as far as I know. More
info .
It looks so much like a Mazda 13B that a replica
rotary Riva would surely be very easy to create...
Classic Lada Jokes
Mostly about the Classic saloon rather than the Niva, and many of these are simply reinventions of jokes about other low-priced marques, but funny none the less. Give me a laugh.
Also see: Niva Development History (Ivan Shevelenko) - a comprehensive history of the development of the Niva with lots of prototype and pre-production images (1.3M)
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