On August 2 the 500,000th Chevrolet Niva offroadster rolled off the assembly line of GM-AvtoVAZ joint venture. Going back a bit, the first Chevrolet Niva car was produced in September 2002.
A pilot model of a then-new Niva VAZ-2123 was publicly shown back in 1998, but financial problems that caused a huge setback forced AvtoVAZ to attract some investments—provided by General Motors US corporate group. The foreign partner helped to invest in the development of a new assembly plant in Tolyatti and improved and refined the offroad car design. The Russian customers saw the car named as Chevrolet Niva.
Currently the offroadster is powered by 1.7 Li 80 hp engine, but in 2006 to 2008 small batches of Nivas with Opel 1.8 Li 122 hp engines and Aisin gearboxes were also produced. More powerful vehicles were planned to be exported to Europe, but due to this or that reason the project was not given the green light.
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