VAZ 1111
Oka VAZ (SEAZ, KAMAZ)-1111 — the Soviet and Russian small car of the first group of especially small class (a segment A — minicars). The car was developed at the Volga Automobile Plant, was issued on VAZ, ZMA, KAMAZ and SEAZE in 1988 — 2008.The Oka car began to be developed in the late seventies at the Serpukhov automobile plant (SEAZ) for replacement of the obsolete S3D microcar. Then development was transferred to AvtoVAZ where the project from the microcar turned in full, though small, the car.
Very modern, for the time, the design of a body and meeting expectations of cars of this class in the world, was created in UGK of AvtoVAZ by the designer (at that time, the artist the designer) Yury Aleksandrovich Vereshchagin. It should be noted that this development to be one of the few cases when the domestic car (USSR) was not a fruit of direct loan and adaptation of a foreign analog.
The Japanese Daihatsu Cuore microcar of a sample of 1980 is considered a prototype of Oka, but except the main concept of design of a body and a number of technical solutions the design of Oka actually was developed anew (especially power unit and a running gear).
Initially Oka, as well as Daihatsu Cuore, it was supposed to equip with the original 3-cylinder engine, but because of its unavailability by the time of the beginning of production of the car the 2-cylinder engine which was actually representing the "half" of the 1,3-liter VAZ-2108 motor equipped with two balancing shaft and counterbalances on a flywheel and a pulley was used. Essentially new 3-cylinder engine was ready by the beginning of the 90th years, but crisis in branch interfered with its introduction.
The first full-scale models of the new car were created in October, 1982. After that three pilot batches of the car were made, each of which had differences from previous. At the beginning of 1987 the trial party VAZ-1111 was released. Mass production of Oka began in 1988.