Talk:Zhiguli (car brand)

Brand?
The Zhiguli was not a brand, it was only a domestic name for those models. For example; VAZ-2103 Žiguli - how can this be a brand if VAZ clearly stands before Žiguli? That same VAZ (Volžskij Avto Zavod), was actually a (domestic) name of the brand, named simply after the factory which was producing them and that same brand was commercially known as Lada. Literally same as BWM, as an example - the sole difference is only that BWM never featured such special, export name like VAZ or other Soviet automakers. (Moskvich for AZLK and Zaporozhets for ZAZ) Other example can be UAZ (Uljanovskij Avto Zavod) - it also never featured any other (export) name, but that was due to the fact that it, as a military vehicle, was never meant to be sold in foreign civilian markets, in contrast to VAZ, ZAZ or AZLK which were all exclusively civilian automakers. So, Zhiguli does not have anything to do with being a 'brand', it was only domestic name of specific models, as stated before. In other words, if Zhiguli is a brand, then Niva and Sputnik (Samara) are also by that logic, since those three are roughly the same.

I guess the mistake and confusion about this is due to the fact that export variants of those models never featured any kind of model name like domestic ones, but only the mentioned export name of the sole brand together with their engine displacement (Lada 1600, for example).

Yet was the VAZ-2121 Niva first model which, together with the above mentioned, also featured the export name of the model itself - Lada Niva 1600, for example. (However, it was also the sole exception in all VAZ models by featuring the same model name for both domestic and export markets) Also, VAZ-2105 Zhiguli was the first model which featured a different export name of the model than domestic one (it was known as Lada Riva 1300 in export markets).