Ex-Nissan plant in St. Petersburg is ready to release Lada Iskra

AvtoVAZ, together with the Saint Petersburg Automobile Plant (ex-Nissan plant), have begun the final stage of preparing the serial production of the Lada Iskra. In total, up to four thousand copies of the model are planned to be produced in St. Petersburg by the end of the year, the company said in a statement received by Izvestia on August 26.

Deliveries of assembly kits for mass production of all modifications of the Lada Iskra family (sedan, station wagon and SW Cross in various colors and trim levels, with manual and automatic transmissions) will begin in early September. The cars assembled in Tolyatti and St. Petersburg will be technically and visually identical, AvtoVAZ noted.

The agreement on the organization of Lada Iskra production in St. Petersburg was signed by Maxim Sokolov, President of AvtoVAZ, and Ivan Mironov, CEO of Avtozavod Saint Petersburg, in mid-June 2025 at the SPIEF site.

Since the signing, specialists from both companies have jointly carried out work in St. Petersburg on reconfiguring existing and installing new equipment, training staff, debugging logistics chains, and more. In the summer, 200 Lada Iskra machine kits were shipped from Tolyatti to St. Petersburg, where technological operations, personnel training and quality control were worked out. The Iskra assembly kit includes a painted body, powertrain, interior elements, chassis and other components. There are about 1 thousand assembly units in total.

After the Japanese company left Russia, production of Xcite crossovers was launched at the former Nissan plant. Loading the enterprise with Iskra vehicles "will ensure the preservation of the experienced team of the automobile plant and will give additional orders for the Russian component industry," Sokolov said earlier. Ivan Mironov, General Director of Avtozavod Saint Petersburg, promised to ensure the "high quality of every car produced" by Lada.

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The first Lada Iskra test drive

Sales of Lada Iskra started on July 20 in Tolyatti, Moscow and St. Petersburg. Delivery to dealers in other regions is expected within a few weeks. The Iskra sedan costs from 1.25 million rubles in the basic configuration with a manual transmission. The most expensive modification of the model, the raised SW Cross station wagon in the maximum configuration with a CVT, was estimated at 1.8 million rubles.

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