Is a Lada Riva worth anything?

[rallycross]

I last drove one of these in around 1987 it had only done 12,000 miles , it was so bad I can vividly recall it even now 24 years later! cripplingly heavy steering, crunch gears, bouncy ride, an engine that was so harsh it sounded like it had done 200,000 miles and was about to go bang, and they had 3 keys, one for the door, one for the ignition and one for the petrol cap.

Its a car from a best forgoten era so I hope you save it and get it back out on the road, it would be fun to convert it eg take a rusty nissan 200sx and put the engine gearbox and diff in the riva and go drifting!

Value is probably nothing at the moment but has to be worth being saved.

Edited by rallycross on Friday 21st June 22:13

[Vince70]

I don't have a clue what its worth but back in the 90s I bought a 4 year old riva for a hundred quid with a years tax and test,
The thing was bullet proof I just couldn't kill it, but it was a horrible drive.
If you do put fresh juice in the car you can mechanically prime the fuel pump to save your battery on a Lada.

[jsc15]

I acquired an aunt's mint-ish 1994 example with 22k miles on it in 2005. Stuck it on Ebay for £150 and the only enquiry I had was someone asking if the original toolkit was in the boot.

Since then I think prices have gone up a bit, probably due to the scrappage scheme taking a few off the streets. You might get an OK price but upper 3-figures at most, and best to go on Ebay for a decent audience

[Cleon Fonte]

Definitely based on the FIAT 124, not the 128. Apparently if you know the right bits of the FIAT parts bin to raid you can completely transform the car into something far quicker (and more fun).

Someone did list a Riva on Car and Classic for £2500 and sold it pretty quickly, I've seen them go on eBay for about a grand so definitely worth saving from a financial point of view.

[Fleckers]

Years back the eastern Europeans / Russians used to by these and ship back to home land

Be worth an add in loot etc

[aw51 121565]

Some fans on autoshte dot com . And the emissions can be fixed (for the MoT) on the last ones, they use a GM system (whch adapts itself to the car and its condition) where the codes can be 'flashed off' using a paperclip and the appropriate light on the dash (there is a website dedicated to this stuff and Ladas generally!!!!!11!1) and "the issue(s)" fixed easily.

Could fancy one myself, not sure why !

[s p a c e m a n]

retrorides or carandclassic are your friends. There was a long feed on my facebook today with a few mates dribbling over this and egging each other to get/build one, some strange people do have a thing for them.

http://www.carandclassic.co.uk/car/C378621

Edited by s p a c e m a n on Friday 21st June 23:53

[karona]

You know you want to:
Road trip to the European Far East, and flog it when you get here:
http://www.cars.bg/?go=cars&search=1&advan...

Ladas are state-of-the-art motoring out here!

[oscar 4b]

I would imagine there is an East European out there somewhere just itching to stuff it up the arse of a brand new S Class.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FluSxID7n3c

[MadmanO/T People]

Sell it to somebody on here.....

http://autosh ite.com/ (eliminate the space between the h and the i when typing the URL)


They all love this sort of thing!

[skyrover]

strip it and track it

[Fubar1977]

Get some fresh fuel, a good battery and a can of easy start, check it`s got some oil/coolant in it and crack on, I`d be willing to bet it`ll fire up just fine.
Brakes etc. might be siezed but the motor will probably be fine. It`s worth more as a driver and someone will have it at that mileage for sure.

[poshboy]

My family sold these from the mid 80's to the demise of Lada in the 90's, the company stopped bringing the cars over when they lost the contract to take Coca Cola from England To Russia by boat. Many dealers did really well from Lada and set up a lot of motor trade families, everyone complains they were rubbish but a brand new car at sub 4k with a warranty was the easiest sell in the world. At one point my father ordered 100 white Riva's in one go, sold before they hit the forecourt pretty much

[theironduke]

Piersman2 said:

205alive said:

Whoa there, ang abaaaht... isn't the Riva identical in a lot of respects to the now very rare and somewhat valuable Fiat 128? Maybe this warrants further investigation - the shell at least could be worth a decent pile of lira, could it not?

No, not really!

My first ever car was a Riva. It was based on the Fiat 128, lots of the manufacturing plant was sold to Lada when Fiat binned the 128 but I would assume there's probably little practically common between the two.

Most Lada Rivas ended up heading back to Russia in the mid nineties. I used to work in Aberdeen near the harbour and the russian trawlers that docked would spend two weeks buying up every Riva they could find and loading them on the deck to transport back to Russia.

For the one you have, get it running and flog it on Ebay - you could get a few quid for it! It probably only needs new fuel and a battery, they are about as basic an engine as you can get and built for Russian peasants to be able to fix with the contents of a barn.

Get it running and give it a matt black paint job, massive hammer and sickle on the bonnet, bit of tinting....awesomeness

[elephantstone]

Strangely appealing.

[Clamjouster]

My dad had a Riva 1200 on an E plate from 88 to 94 and I spent many hateful hours in the back of it. The ridicule I got from my peers was only slightly over shadowed by that of the unfortunate souls whose parents drove a Skoda Estelle or an FSO Polonez.

KILL IT! KILL IT WITH FIRE! Or better yet find an abandoned ship yard or industrial estate and see just how much punishment it will withstand by crashing it into things. That'd actually be quite a fun thing to do as they're built like tanks.

Edited by Clamjouster on Saturday 22 June 15:39

[soad]

elephantstone said:

Strangely appealing.

Would you buy one though?

[JimbobVFR]

Where abouts are you defcon? Reason I ask is I've got a couple of mates who are really into this sort of suit car, one of them is currently restoring a Yugo FFS. They might very well be interested.

[jamiem555]

A dark blue B reg Riva was my first car, at the grand old age of 12! It was my Dad's punishment to my Mum for being a crap driver, then I inherited it after it failed its MOT, with the words, "If you can drive that on gravel, you can drive anything!"
I had 7 miles of private road to learn on and it was great fun. Ran it for 4 years and it was bullet proof. Even half rolled it once. The only damage was slightly cosmetic and the back window popped out. It was more aerodynamic after that too, bonus!!

[SystemParanoia]

skyrover said:

strip it and track it

Nahh.. The dirts for racin'.. the roads just for getting there