The former well known Soviet car manufacturer Moskvich is going to resume production at a former Renault plant in the suburbs of Russian capital Moskow, press agency Reuters reported today.
The former Moskvich plant (name Avtoframos) located near Moscow was owned by Groupe Renault until March this year, when Renault stopped all its operations in the Russian Federation, following the sanctions imposed by Western world after the war against Ukraine.
Once upon a time, Moskvich cars (the last one has been built in early 90’s) have been quite popular in the USSR and former communist countries, notably the models 408 and 2141 Aleko (showed in picture above).
Despite the fact that in Romania Moskvich was not as popular as local Dacias or Soviet Ladas, there are 543 Moskvich cars still running on Romanian roads, according to the official figures.
The new models, named Moskvich 3 and 3e (the last one is electric version) are to be produced in cooperation with the Russian truck maker Kamaz and a Chinese carmaker, JAC.
Sales are slated to begin next month, Russian officials hope. The company aims to assemble 600 units by the end of the year. 400 of them are slated to be powered by internal combustion engines (petrol powered, probably), while the remaining 200 crossovers, badged Moskvich 3e, will be fully electric.
No official information about the price has been released to this day.
„The Moskvich plant’s priority will be to produce electric cars on its own platform with a gradual increase in localization of components. SKD assembly of the Moskvich 3 car and electric vehicles is launched in 2022.
The short-term task is to launch CKD assembly with the involvement of local suppliers by the end of 2023. The next step will be the creation of our own universal platform for a domestic electric vehicle, due to go into production at the end of 2025″, Russian press agency Interfax reported yesterday.
surse foto: Wikimedia/Torman R, Wikipedia/Moskvich
