Lada Oka

VAZ-1111 Oka (Russian: Ока ВАЗ (СеАЗ, КамАЗ)-1111) is a city car designed in the Soviet Union in the later part of the seventies by AvtoVAZ. It entered production in 1988 powered by a 650 cc (40 cu in) SOHC two-cylinder engine. While developed at AutoVAZ by a team led by Yuri Kuteev, no production models were built there. Instead, manufacturing was outsourced to SeAZ factory in Serpukhov and ZMA in Naberezhnye Chelny (formerly owned by Kamaz and now owned by SeverstalAvto). Massive plans were in place for a new plant in Yelabuga, but these failed to materialize. The car was also produced in Azerbaijan by the Gyandzha Auto Plant. The name comes from the Oka River in Russia upon which Serpukhov is situated. For a large part of its existence its electric version was the only electric car in the world.

This affordable, lightweight and simple automobile replaced the air-cooled, rear-engined ZAZ Zaporozhets 966-968 series models as "the people's car". SeAZ factory specialized in building purpose-built vehicles for handicapped drivers and by the 1970s their offering was the S-3D, a spartan, boxy two-seat sedan powered by a motorcycle engine. Despite being noisy and smoky, the S-3D was, nevertheless, very popular with mobility-challenged drivers many of whom were World War II veterans and, being such, received their vehicles free of charge. When engineers in Serpukhov under factory manager Alexander Popov (who told Minavtoprom (the automotive ministry) SeAZ needed a new product) conceived the Oka, they turned to their VAZ colleagues for help. The project was approved in 1983. Prior to the Oka, VAZ designers had been working on a number of microcars, including a similar-looking variant of the VAZ-1101 offered by the designer Yuri Danilov in 1971, but those models didn't go into production.

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