lada niva ambulance 1024x
Michael Taylor9 Oct 2019
NEWS

Lada ambulance, anybody?

Inexplicably, Russia’s ancient Lada Niva isn’t dead yet. But it might save your life

Remember the Lada Niva? Russia’s answer to the Land Rover Defender learned all of the lessons taught by the British classic and delivered them at a much lower price.

The butt of thousands of jokes ever since its 1977 launch (the same year as the Porsche 928, incidentally), the Niva – renamed the Lada 4x4 in 2006 after parent company AvtoVAZ sold the name’s rights to GM -- has been turned into an ambulance in its native Russia.

The five-door version of the 4x4 has been officially built by the Lada factory as a machine for transporting doctors, but will see double service for disabled patients.

The AvtoVAZ brand’s ambulance will retain the 1.7-litre four-cylinder engine under its ancient bonnet, producing a thumping 62kW of power and paired to a five-speed manual gearbox.

There won’t be many more powertrain upgrades, but there will be a few inside, including a raft of medical bits and pieces like a swing-out mechanism for the right front seat.

There will also be a stretcher and a stretcher-catching apparatus, plus power windows (a big thing, apparently, in a 4x4), air-conditioning (ditto), steps and a heater for the rear seats.

It is far from the first emergency-services version of the 4x4 sold by Lada, whose police cars have featured just about every spy movie from The Bourne Identity to Atomic Blonde, while there are also fire-brigade 4x4s all over Russia.

Lada sold 23,464 4x4s in the first nine months of the year (roughly lineball with its 2018 figures) and the archaic off-roader is due to receive a major facelift at the end of this year.

It will score new bumpers, lights, bodywork, dashboard, instrument cluster, central tunnel and a complete interior overhaul, right down to its steering wheel, which will no longer be made from hand-carved stone from the Ural Mountains.

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Written byMichael Taylor
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