Just because a car is utterly dreadful and grey, doesn’t have to mean it’s all that debauched, does it? Some examples include vehicles, which at their finest, were average – such as the Marina, Hillman Imp and Vauxhall Chevette. These were cars that we now look back upon with heartfelt affection, but very few of us look back on the Lada Samara with anything other than fear and disdain. Here’s why.
Woeful Wednesday: The Lada Samara
Some cars have been truly great at changing the shape of things to come – like the Escort and Astra; but both were just as good at rusting away as they were at racking up sales. They proved that average could sell - because they were raw good fun. An often-untrue resentment is often presented to us against Soviet vehicles as being drab and ungainly, but these are commonly formed on what Jeremy Clarkson has to say.
True, we giggle and pun at Lada Rivas and the likes of the FSO Polonez, but they were two cars (quite literally) premeditated to survive an uninterrupted barrage of American missiles. As Rugged as a mountain range on the outside yet as flimsy and hopelessly out of date akin to a Dukes of Hazzard script on the inside, they were both reasonably successful on their home turf as they were in the UK – and many owners bought them time after time after time. Could you seriously imagine driving an Austin Allegro or Ford Granada head on into a Soviet snow blizzard in temperatures of minus 15? A Land Rover would deal with it for fun, but that’s quite a bit more expensive and almost alcoholic in its fuel feasting.
You have to face it, any BL or Ford product would probably struggle with a Russian, or nuclear, winter. The Ladas are surprisingly tough old birds, often still being driveable after even the heaviest of collisions. The driver and passenger may be all over the dashboard, but the car can continue on…and that’s just the spirit, is it not?
The Riva was an unmitigated design failure, mainly because they used a 40-year-old, out-dated Fiat design right up until the last decade…but it was built like a tank and supported the livelihoods of millions of families. So what’s not to like? We find it charming, and rather entertaining.
The Niva was a monumental laughing stock to those who didn’t understand it, but it was and still is an unbelievably tough workhorse with the characteristics and command of Attila the Hun. Even the historical models before that (the 1200/1500/1600) were capable of driving up a snowy mountain while towing several fallen trees and being attacked by a bear, before driving across a frozen lake carrying a years worth of cod in the boot.
So what in the name of all that is holy where they thinking when they made the Samara?
Is it a pleasure to be in the company of a Samara? In a strange way, it is actually. It just goes to show what we take for granted in a modern budget car. The Samara is the equivalent of Coldplay’s latest album. You just don’t want it. At all.
The plastics inside the car itself are the definition of cheap, tacky and smelly. Strangely, the interior has several sharp edges while the plastics are brittle, probably made from melted down LPs. The smell that greets you is glue. On first impression, it’s a truly horrendous car. While it was a step forward in the modernisation of Lada, and this has never been said before, the Riva has so much more charm that you wouldn’t turn it down presented with one or the other.
While a car of basic charm can overcome its shortcomings, the Samara is just tripe. It seriously makes the Maestro feel like a modern day Audi. From a short journey as a driver, people found that, although the car was through an MOT, the brakes were downright dangerous as the pedal needed to be in the bulkhead before it did anything, the ride comfort seemed to violate several UN human rights and the acceleration was so poor that on hill starts a pedal bike is more relaxing. As a 1.1, this is a seriously gutless car. I can appreciate that cars can wither with age, but even an old Allegro with the mechanics of a garden shed feels supreme compared to this.
After talking to several owners who had these cars from new, the Samara seemed badly made, weak, flimsy and slow, uncomfortable, dangerous and unreliable. How the hell did these fare in Russia and the soviet side of Europe? Perhaps there is a reason why the Riva continued and the Samara died young. However, further digging found that the Samara was designed solely to infiltrate the decadent western car market. I don’t know what the Lada designers think of the west, but it’s clearly not much.
The fact these sold in decent-ish numbers within the UK boils down to two points: they were seriously, seriously cheap when brand new and cheap to run. The AA man who arrived to help me figure out why my Rover 25 had set itself on fire a while back told me a tale about the Samara when asked, that honestly sounded like he was making it up. It involved two people driving down the motorway after having purchased one from a main dealer and finding the steering column came away from its bearings.
Further than that, electrical components would ignite, brakes would fail completely and the cooling system would fry everything under the rusty bonnet. Drive shafts disintegrated and window cables would sheer – and these are only the most common problems. The clutch was so flimsy that you could change gear without actually using it. While the engine was pretty sound, on tick over the engine was so lumpy that it was common to see them bouncing on their mounts and, yes, it did have fancy light wipers like a Volvo or a Range Rover, but they would stop at such awkward angles that the car would look lop-sided.
After 25 years in the AA, the mechanic told me this was the worst car he had ever found to be sold freely in Britain. He finished, before telling me my Rover was beyond repair, by stating that in a crash over 20 miles per hour, it crumpled so badly, that you were lucky if you came out alive. 20 miles per hour…that’s the speed of a cyclist on a downhill slope.
However, instead of fixing these problems, Lada decided to introduce a saloon version – this was apparently so god awful that dealers could only shift them off their forecourts if they threw in ridiculous extras and finance deals that made them absolutely no money at all. As the Japanese continued to invade and the likes of Hyundai and Daewoo flooded into the market, Lada died a mainstream death in 1996, when importers agreed that for their sanity and due to financial losses, they were going to stop importing them. The Niva was great fun, the Riva was retro-charm and quite cheeky…but the Samara was not only a waste of human effort, material and fluids; it was a waste of automotive space.
Cheap ownership can often bring excitement, but while the Samara can be ridiculously cheap (we found a 1997 GLX 1.5 for £375) the only excitement you would get from your Samara was when someone arrived to take it away. Should it last long enough, owners promise that you will dread every MOT and check up. Of the 62 left on the road in Britain and 102 on SORN, leave them all well alone.
Perhaps, in the not so distant future, these will be put in museums and people will respect it for its age, after all that’s exactly what’s happening now to the likes of the Austin Princess and Ambassador. Until then, steer well clear. If someone buys one in your area, call the emergency services. They are will soon require an ambulance.