Lada in WTCC officially...
It seems that a Lada works team will be in the 2009 entry list of the World Touring Car Championship. According to TouringCarTimes.com, Victor Shapovalov said the Lada WTCC is a three-years project:"This year is only testing and next year we would like to have a new car. When we would have the new model we also would have more technical support from Lada. They want to change their image and for Lada the WTCC is a good base to show what they want to be in the future."
But which car?
The production of the Lada 110 has already stopped and the new Lada Priora (2170) is now in production since April of 2007. Actually the car is a face-lifted 110. This would mean that the S2000-specs development of the Priora is not so difficult as a completely new car. The problem is that there is no a 2-litre version of the car to be homologated. Maybe a 2-litre "sport" edition should be unveiled soon just like Lada 110 2.0 GTI (21106) back in 1996 (at Paris Motor Show in October maybe? why not?). And I think that it will be a "powered by Renault" edition since the Opel C20XE is already old enough and of course now Renault Group owns the 25% of AvtoVAZ.
On the other hand the 2007 Lada Project C (2116) developed by AvtoVAZ and Magna-Steyr is a modern and beautiful car. It could increase the sales of AvtoVAZ dramatically but unfortunatelly it remains just a prototype although it was announced to be in production in 2009. The industry news are lack of information about this vehicle.
However the Lada 2116 sedan participated in the EuroCarBody benchmarking for the first time as “SPECIAL GUEST 2007” (see 9th European Car Body AWARD Event, 2007):
"The clean-cut and well-structured car body positively surprised many conference participants with its low weight", according to the organizers of the event.
