New look ahead for Russia’s iconic Lada
Designers want to eliminate those boxy lines
MOSCOW — Ask Steve Mattin whether he has any qualms about moving to Russia, and he answers with another question.
“How often,” the U.K. car designer asks, “do you get the opportunity to come into a company with a completely blank sheet of paper?”
The answer for car designers like Mattin, 48, who previously worked at Mercedes for 18 years before a stint at Volvo, is hardly ever.
Even so, when he was first asked to re-design one of Russia’s most iconic, but not exactly best loved, brands he admits he did not exactly leap at the chance.
“I really thought twice — ‘do I want to design Ladas?’” he laughs. “But it was such an opportunity to change things. You very seldom get such backing from the company to change everything.”
Recent years have not been kind to Lada, the brand that started life as the Soviet Union’s version of a people’s car in the 1970s.
Abroad, it is still best known as the butt of tired jokes. (How do you double the value of a Lada? Fill it with gas).
Even in Russia, the conventional wisdom among drivers is to avoid the domestic brand if you can afford to.
By the time Mattin arrived in Russia in 2011, the company had very nearly died completely.
The 2008-2009 financial crisis had flattened sales figures and forced AvtoVAZ, the state-controlled car company that has churned out Ladas since 1970, to lay off nearly 22,500 workers. It was only saved by a 20 billion ruble $640-million Cdn) Russian government bailout. By the end of 2009, Vladimir Putin’s government had extended 75 billion ruble in financial assistance to the company.
Lada so far retains its inherited dominance of the domestic car market — it sold 537,625 units in Russia in 2012, almost 20 per cent of the national market — largely thanks to being the most affordable option for thousands of Russians. But foreign brands are fast eroding its lead, even in the budget market. In 2012, the average price for a new Lada in Russia was $10,800, compared with $9,549 for a Daewoo, according to industry think-tank Avtostat. It was the first time a foreign brand had undercut the market leader, and it was a wake-up call.
“Lada can’t rely on the brand being just cheap any more,”says Mattin.The boxy Zhiguli, still ubiquitous on the streets of Moscow, officially went through several permutations between its launch in 1970 and the final end of production last year, but the rejection of anything approaching streamlining was constant throughout.
And the strange, angular outline of Lada’s muchloved 4x4 model, the Niva, has barely changed since it went into production in 1977. “Design has not been as important here in Russia as elsewhere,” says Mattin. “Everyone knows what a Lada looks like, and it’s not very attractive. That will change in the future.”
His first prescription was to “emotionalize” the Lada brand — play around with proportions, lines and angles to get away from the utilitarian, boxlike look.
The result, unveiled at the Moscow car show in late 2012, is what Mattin calls the XRay concept: a distinctive x-shaped grill and bold signature body sculpting that will characterize a new range of vehicles scheduled to roll off production lines in 2015.
The stakes are high. Russia has the fastest growing car market in Europe. More than 2.9 million cars and light vans were sold in 2012, up 10 per cent on 2011.