While searching today, I came across this photo from Seattle, Washington. This is a Lada 110 with the same state numbers. When I wrote a post about Renault 504, I found out that it is not so easy to bring a foreign car into the USA, it must pass local certification and a crash test, and this costs quite a lot of money, and is not at all profitable when importing single copies. Either I misunderstood something, or that source was wrong (possibly), or AvtoVAZ certified the top ten for the USA (almost unbelievable), or I don’t understand how it leaked here. Any ideas?

I can understand the feelings of the photographer, I was recently overtaken by a red VAZ 2102 on one of the streets of Brooklyn, I was so surprised that I even forgot to take a picture of it. For the first second, you don’t react at all, and then there is a slight shock from what you see - as if you were overtaken not by an ordinary basin, but at least by an alien ship, the VAZ classic looks so unnatural on the New York streets.

Immediately I remembered one movie that I watched a very long time ago, back in the days when a color TV was a luxury, TV channels were switched with pliers, and an ordinary VCR "Electronics VM-12" was a sign of its owner's unreal wealth. The only way to watch newfangled foreign films with a nasal translation was to go to the video salon located in the entrance of a neighboring house.
It was there that I saw another American horror film called "Rats". In the film, giant rats from the sewers attacked some large American city and its unfortunate inhabitants. It’s hard to watch it now without smiling, but for that time it was a completely normal film, I remember it was even a little scary.
In terms of the level of impact on the fragile brain of a Soviet schoolchild, the film "Aliens" was definitely in the first place, but "Rats" were the same nothing. There was something to talk about later at the school break, and then you didn’t really have to choose, what was shown in the video salon, then you watched.
But I remember this film not by killer rats, but by the fact that its main character, quite unexpectedly, drove a Zhiguli of the 3rd model. It was very strange - an American film and a Soviet car. I remember we laughed at it for a long time and discussed it for a long time. Funnier was only the moment of one Indian film, where a local millionaire and the owner of everything in the world drove a very cool car with a personal driver. The car was a VAZ 2101, where the whole hall was laughing out loud. Later, after visiting India, I realized that it was really cool.
As the years passed, the impressions were forgotten, and it even began to seem that there were no Zhiguli in that film, you never know what the young pioneer could have dreamed of in a dimly lit entrance. After reading the link, of course, the first thing I did was to look for that old film and, to my considerable surprise, I found it. It was called “Deadly Eyes”, and not any “Rats”, it was filmed back in 1982, but it turned out not to be American, but Canadian. But who among us then understood the difference, they looked on the TV screen that the USA and Canada were exactly the same. The movie, by the way, is so lame that it's even on youtube, you can enjoy it.

Frame from the film. Indeed, it didn’t seem to me - they were real Zhiguli.

In the case of the Zhiguli from the film, there is a difference between Canada and the USA, because VAZ cars were officially delivered only to Canada, in the USA this could only happen in a nightmare.

In 1977, a five-year contract was signed to import Lada cars to Canada. In May 1978, the first batch of the "Canadian" modification of the "six" - VAZ-21061-37 - was sent overseas. Outwardly, this version differed from the standard version with massive energy-absorbing bumpers of the original design with built-in signal optics. This change was not due to a desire to "embellish" the original exterior of the car, but to the safety requirements in force in North America.

It is the overseas safety standards that explain other differences: the sidelights have become entirely orange, and the section of the taillights turn indicators - red. Special light bulbs are built into reflectors on the rear fenders of the car of the new modification. Together with direction indicators on the front fenders, they served as side marker lights when the dipped beam was turned on.

In the interior of the car, on the dashboard (to the left of the clock), a scoreboard appeared, signaling that seat belts were not fastened. This board was combined with a light board "Check Engine" - as such machines were equipped with a system to reduce toxicity using a catalytic converter and an adsorber.

Also, some changes were made to the brake system in the VAZ-21061-37, which, after some time, were implemented on later Zhiguli models. VAZ-21061-37 today is a very high value among collectors and just lovers of "classic" VAZ cars, as the rarest car from the entire VAZ-2106 line.
The text is taken from the Internet, but it is so quoted that it is no longer possible to establish its original source.

Cars to Canada from the USSR were naturally delivered by ships across the ocean. Cargo ships came to the port of Dartmouth in Nova Scotia, where they were unloaded, and from there the cars were transported to the dealerships of Lada Cars of Canada. In the first year, about 1,000 cars were sold. In 1979, 5,649 cars had already been sold. By 1981, sales had risen to 12,900. Sales were recognized as very successful, and the Canadians themselves were quite willing to buy previously unseen Soviet cars. But it was hard not to buy them, Lada was the cheapest car on the Canadian market at the time, and not the worst. The main competitors were the Czechoslovak Skoda and the Romanian Dacia. In Canada, there were 43 dealerships that sold an average of 1,000 cars per month.

Dealership Lada in Canada.

There were very few additional options for the Soviet car - you could additionally order a leather sheath for the steering wheel, a wooden or leather-wrapped gear knob, AM / FM radio, alloy wheels and floor mats. The car was given a factory warranty: 12 months or 20,000 kilometers, whichever comes first.

Lada Samara parked in front of a dealership in Canada.

In 1979, assessing the success of sales of Soviet cars in neighboring Canada, the American company Satra Industrial corp. from New York, decides to start selling Lada cars in the United States, but their plans did not come true, in December 1979, Soviet troops enter Afghanistan, and the US Congress blocks trade relations with the Soviet Union. The Americans also could not buy a Lada in Canada and bring it to the USA, the car did not pass the American emission standards of those years.

Canadians believed that the USSR, in order to conquer the market, deliberately sold cars below their price and called it the largest dumping in the history of the country. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, was in dire need of convertible currency, and dumping was the only way to achieve high sales in a completely new and highly competitive market.

Due to the war in Afghanistan, Lada owners sometimes had problems - some were refused to fill up at gas stations, and one Canadian businessman even forbade Soviet cars from parking in the parking lot in front of the company's office.

Later, the line of cars was replenished with the budget SUV Lada Niva, which was also very successfully sold, and in 1990 Lada Samara was added to them. Sales were curtailed in 1997 due to strong competition from Korean automakers, and due to the already rather outdated design of Russian cars at that time.

Interesting scene from the movie. What is that half hatch? The classics never had hatches, and even more so such huge ones. What is it - a Canadian collective farm or a secret option of a Soviet manufacturer for overseas consumers?

A few photos of VAZ products in the vastness of North America

Lada Samara, Seattle, Washington.

Lada Cossack, Seattle, Washington. I see Seattle is quite a popular place among the owners of basins.

Lada Sputnik (not Samara), Quebec, Canada

Lada Cossack, Manitoba, Canada. The room especially delivers.

Lada Niva, Calgary, Canada.

Lada Samara, Ontario, Canada

Lada Signet wagon, Matinoba, Canada.

Lada Signet, British Columbia, Canada.

Lada from the parking lot of one of the film studios in Canada.

Canadian street racer :)

And finally, a few photos from the Canadian landfill.

P.S. If someone is not in the know, then Homer Simpson, according to the creators, also drove a Lada, in the film version of the intro, he is driving a Lada Riva.