WILL NIVA’S SPIRIT SURVIVE?

Driving the current Lada Niva back to back with its infinitely more refined modern counterparts lays bare the inherent shortcomings from which it suffers as a result of its age and utilitarian billing.

A spartan cabin and lacklustre performance are among the most glaring pitfalls, but it’s equally hard to ignore its thirst for petrol and its archaic construction.

These are all traits that will be put right by the adoption of a modern platform, but that might not necessarily be a good thing.

The Niva is so endearingly compromised and so unique in its shunning of gratuitous electrickery that you quickly forgive its foibles, so will its modernisation deprive us of one of the last few genuinely characterful SUVS on sale?

The names Land Rover Defender, Mercedes-benz G-class and Toyota Land Cruiser spring to mind, but here’s hoping the Niva can pull a Suzuki Jimny by keeping some of the no-frills joviality that has won it fans of all means in the past.