Banged-up and with a terrible engine "Soviet-built light commercials are
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about as common as 38-tonne Sinclair C5s," wrote CM's technical writer Brian Weatherley in February 1986, after he was unlucky enough to put a Lada 370 van around CM's van test route.
As well as being rare, the Lada van, which was basically an estate car with blanked-out rear windows, was utter rubbish! During its two weeks with us it went back to the dealer on no less than five occasions for a variety of faults. These included the engine not developing full power, the engine not developing full power again, engine stalling, engine misfiring, and engine still not developing full power.
This left our tester to surmise that "any operator facing the same problems on a new vehicle might wonder if he had bought the right van". No kidding!
One thing it did have in its favour though was price — and at £2,995 it was the second cheapest van on the UK market (beaten only by the Yugo). "But in the end you only get what you pay for," we concluded.
How many left?
According to howmanyleft.co.uk, in 1995 there were just 34 of these rotters left on the UK's roads and a further 37 of the larger engined Riva 820. Four years later the combined total was just five examples and by 2001 there were none left at all.