I'm sorry but lada in general is utter piece of shit.
It is failure from beginning to end. Designed to be car for the masses, where they licensed wrong engine (rocker vs tappet), skimped on many safety aspects by using thicker sheet metal (compared to original fiat 124), shonky build quality, where the replacement parts you bought officially are parts that didn't pass the "quality" inspection on factory. Combined with Russian metallurgy you would be lucky if stock engine would last 50k before major rebuild.
People who were lucky to buy in soviet times, first thing they had to do is check every single bolt. It was very common to buy a car where they forgotten to fill diff with oil.
The reason why Lada includes repair manual and tool kit is because you will need it. Actually you will need it even before the first service, as there is always something they forgot to tighten or plug in.
The lack of quality can be traced to a simple things like bolts.
bzrspeed: take a random bolt off a japanese car and compare to random bolt of lada. Specifically how precise is the thread, and choice of thread pitch. Lada will have coarser thread, with huge tolerances and rough finish, hence they will "unscrew" themselves.
I never had bolts fallen out on japanese cars by themselves.
Do you know why people buy second hand Japanese LHD cars in Vladivostock region, which have huge kms on the speedo, instead of brand new Lada? Because from their experience the Toyota Corolla with 300kms will last longer, drive better, safer, comfortable, reliable, and will be more economical than brand new Lada.
Where I from, we didn't had access to Japanese cars, but people instead chose 20yo+ Opels over brand new Lada. Opel FFS!!!
Now Putin is promoting Lada Kalina, while not addressing many failures of said car and company that makes it. Correction, Putin is forcing everyone to buy Lada Kalina by using FUD (Fear Uncertainty Doubt) on imports, as there are laws in the works to completely cut off imports and prohibit current import fleet.
Here is an objective prolonged review of Lada Kalina (flagship Lada):
http://kalina.drom.ru/
Translation
http://translate.google.com/translate?h ... drom.ru%2F
The image of lada that you are promoting here is a romantic delusion.
Lada will never be a good car, unless you take out of the picture Russian negligence, thievery, corruption and general not giving a $$% that is ingrained in Russian mentality.
If lada is operated by Russians and factories are manned by Russians then they will always mass produce rotten piles of shit.