Lada

Lada is a car brand owned by AvtoVAZ, an automaker based at the Russian car factory located in Togliatti, which is currently owned by Renault. AvtoVAZ comes from the acronym VAZ, an acronym for "Volzhsky Avtomobilny Zavod" (Russian transliteration), which means "Volga Automobile Factory". The name Lada replaced the original "Zhiguli", whose phonetics similar to "Gigolo" ended up harming exports. The brand became famous in eastern Europe with the Lada 2105 Laika/Riva, an economy car sold in large numbers during the 1980s-90s, and to this day one of the models with the longest production time. However, subsequent models have not achieved the same success.