VAZ-2108. The story of "Eight"

Any new motor car has attracted the interest of motorists before the start of production. Short messages in print, flashed on the TV screen shots, just talk "experts", of course, incite curiosity and the need for accurate information. This is understandable: people who have bound their lives to the car, they want to know that the factory is ready, so to say, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow. VAZ-2108, a promising model, the life of the car, the car will go in the series, models of the Volga Automobile Plant. Engine, combined with the transmission in a compact unit, situated across the machine and causes the front instead of rear wheels. The body of this three-door five-seater and three-volume, as in the present ("Lada", and two-volume, that is, without protruding from the trunk and door-hatch in the rear sloping wall. VAZ-2108 is slightly shorter VAZ-21011. Front-wheel drive layout allowed us to make car smaller and lighter than the well-known models of the WHA, with the same internal volume and level of interior comfort. In particular, she is 50-60kg lighter VAZ-21011. VAZ-2108 is equipped with an advanced engine, more economical and durable than his predecessors. are plans to release it in three main varieties of working volume: 1200, 1300 and 1500 cm3. In general, the machine will be the same class as the VAZ-2101 VAZ-21011 and VAZ-2103. The main features of the mechanical part new model: the timing belt as the drive cam shaft, five-speed gearbox, rack & pinion steering, vacuum booster. brakes and radial tires and the corresponding characteristics for all wheel independent suspension, headlights with automatic adjustment depending on the load machine, e-contact ignition system. The car will be widely used plastic components, whose mass is about 80 kg (for comparison: the VAZ-2101 - 39 kg), and most corrosive body parts are made of "tsinkrometalla - steel sheet with improved corrosion resistance. Release of the first batch of VAZ-2108 (a rate of about 4 thousand) is scheduled for late 1984, and the latter by the Eleventh Five-Year Plan will be deployed to mass-produce the new model. For the words "mass production" is a huge job. And not only the whole staff association " AvtoVAZ. The country has contributed to the preparation of the production of a new family of "Lada" a lot of money, including the purchase of imported equipment and accessories (such as robots "KavasakiYunimeyt") licenses to individual manufacturing processes and construction sites, some of the materials. To speed up the finishing machine with the new front-wheel drive concept for us, we began to collaborate with the company Porsche (Germany). It must be emphasized that the new machine is fully established Soviet designers, and technical support specialists "Porsche" with wide experience, was called upon to buy time. Mentioning on imported equipment and technology. But here we must bear in mind that the whole pre-production of the new model is based mainly on the ability of the domestic industry: machine tools, metallurgy, electronics, and chemistry. Component parts and materials for the VAZ-2108 should deliver several hundred companies our country. Much has been done directly team Volga automobile plant, including automated production lines, special machines with numerical control, robots, big punches for the manufacture of body parts. To prepare the production WHA on its own produced 430 pieces of equipment worth over 20 million rubles , as well as 210 large stamps, not to mention the construction of new buildings and shops. Pre-production of VAZ-2108 is considered the plant as the most important and responsible task of the entire team, his party's organization. The point, however, is complicated by the fact that the Federal Ministry of Chemical industry, petrochemical industry, industrial production of fertilizers and their enterprises to cope satisfactorily with the tasks to ensure the release of new models of chemical materials and a number of components, and this is very disturbing. In 1985, when the start mass production of next-generation machines, they will go with one of the three threads pipeline - the one at which once started assembling VAZ-2101. The second string will be allocated for the development of the VAZ-2105 and VAZ-2107, and the third will continue assembly of VAZ-2103 and VAZ-2106. The independent production areas will continue production of the VAZ-2121. By the end of 1983 produced more than 150 prototypes of the new car. They have been thoroughly tested, and currently has a wastewater and bringing design.