Fiat 124 USSR: 60 years ago the agreement with the Soviet Union for the Lada

In 1966 the Italian automobile industry enjoyed an enviable state of health. Driven by the post-war economic boom, the sector is still experiencing a brilliant moment, which will only falter towards the end of the decade and the beginning of the following one. There Fiat it is an industrial giant, with enormous economic, political and industrial power in the Italian context: its expansion has redesigned the social physiognomy of a city like Turin, with the transfer of tens of thousands of workers from Southern Italy who find employment especially in Mirafiori. The company, moreover, at that time had 158,500 employees (over 50,000 of whom worked at Mirafiori, whose size was doubled between 1956 and 1958) and had a turnover of around 1,000 billion lire; production, which in 1959 was 425 thousand cars a year, reached over 1.75 million units in less than a decade. Its range of models, moreover, covers almost all segments of the market, starting from small cars with the Nuova 500, the 600 and the 850, continuing with the medium sedans 1100 and 124 (which was created in 1966) and covering the niche of sports cars with the coupé and spider versions of the 850 and with the prestigious Ferrari-powered Fiat Dino (coupé and spider). For the industrial giant led by Vittorio Valletta it’s time to look at the most promising international markets, one of which is the Soviet Union. And that’s why sixty years ago, ion May 4, 1966it was Valletta himself who announced, in the hall of the current Fiat historic center, the Art Nouveau building in Turin where the company was born, the agreement signed with the Minister for the Soviet Automotive Industry Alexander Mikhailovich Tarasov for the production of Fiat cars in the USSR. The contract, which will be finalized on 15 August of the same year in Moscow, provides for the Italian industry to provide the complete design of a new factory and to transfer the know-how and rights for the local production of two models, both derived from the 124 and adapted to the characteristics of Russian roads and climate. For the construction of the factory the choice fell on the city of Togliatti, whose name honors the Italian leader of the Communist Party who died two years earlier, located in the Samara region, just over a thousand kilometers away from Moscow. And it is there that the large AvtoVAZ plant will be built, destined to be fully operational in 1970 for the production of the Lada-VAZ 2101, also known as Ziguli, i.e. the Russian version of the Fiat 124 sedan and family car. The Turin ceremony, in addition to sealing an industrial operation of enormous economic value, also has considerable weight in the international political panorama: in fact, it marks an important opening towards the USSR in years still characterized by the Cold War, which brought the world to the brink of a new global conflict with the crisis of the missiles that Moscow wanted to install in Cuba in 1962 and which saw the two nuclear superpowers subsequently face each other also in the race for the conquest of space. Fiat’s move demonstrated how a dialogue between the West and the Soviet Union was, however, possible, at least on an economic-financial level, with benefits for both parties.