Lada Niva Legend five-door production to end in December

It almost seemed as if the rugged Lada Niva 4×4 was set to continue forever.

In production largely unchanged since 1977, the Russian off-roader continues to be popular with buyers who value its bargain-priced, no-nonsense, go-anywhere charm.

But the end may be in sight, as this week the AutoVAZ factory stopped taking orders for production while it catches up on a backlog, with the five-door variant now set to end production in December 2021.

The VAZ-2131 (as it was known) joined the Niva family in 1993 and uses a 500mm-longer wheelbase to provide an extra set of doors and 125mm more passenger legroom. The rest of the car remains unchanged, and it still uses the same 63kW 1.7-litre four-cylinder engine as it did when it launched.

Due to the longer wheelbase, the five-door Niva isn’t as nimble off road, nor as fuel efficient as its three-door counterpart. It has been reasonably successful, with over 100,000 units produced in the past 28 years. Fair to note, some three million three-door Nivas have been built since 1977, with a reported 650,000 still on the roads.

In February this year, production of the five-door Niva came to a halt due to component supply issues, and while production resumed again in March, output was only 45 vehicles per day in June, compared to 172 units of the three-door model.

Lada launched the more modern Niva Travel SUV in December 2020 which will essentially fill the five-door ‘classic’ Niva’s role in the brand’s line-up – even though the two models have been sold alongside one another for two decades.

Recently, a long-wheelbase Niva Urban was used by the titular character in the Marvel Black Widow movie, and they are used extensively as rural medical support vehicles due to their all-terrain ability and more practical size.