ВАЗ-2121
The 1998 Russian financial crisis improved the company's market position, by improving the effectiveness of export sales and making imported cars too expensive for most Russians. The VAZ-2120 Nadezhda, a minivan based on the Lada Niva, was introduced in 1998. In the second half of the 1990s, some efforts were made to improve the quality of production, but in 1999, nearly 50,000 cases of cars were still being assembled with missing parts.