AvtoVAZ product or material produced passenger car
History
Establishment
The VAZ plant was established in 1966 by the Soviet government in cooperation with the Italian car manufacturer Fiat. Viktor Nikolaevich Polyakov (later Minister of Automobile Industry) was named as director, and Vladimir Solovyov as chief designer. The plant  intended to produce popular economy cars that would meet the growing demand for personal transport. It was built on the banks of the Volga in 1966. A new town, Tolyatti, named after  Italian Communist Party leader Palmiro Togliatti, was built around the plant The cost of the VAZ plant was estimated at $800 million in 1970 (equivalent to $4.4 billion in 2021).The cars to be produced (designated as "Zhiguli") was envisaged as a "people's car" like the Citroën 2CV or the VW Type 1. Production was intended to be 220,000 units a year, beginning in 1971 (other sources listed 300,000 in 1971); car production actually began before the plant was finished in 1970. The VAZ trademark, at first, was a silver Volga boat on a red pentagonal background, with "Togliatti" superimposed in Cyrillic (Тольятти); the first badges, manufactured in Turin, mistakenly had the Cyrillic "Я" rendered "R", instead (Тольʀтти), making them collector's items.The company was not as vertically integrated as other Soviet enterprises; for example, it purchased components from a variety of suppliers over which it exerted little control; in the early years of the company certain parts and subassemblies were imported from Fiat's suppliers in Italy until they could be locally sourced.
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