Development started in 1971 after the Soviet government asked AvtoVAZ and AZLK to build something rural drivers could actually use, where the ordinary Zhiguli could not.[1] The result, tested against a UAZ-469, a Land Rover Series and a Range Rover Classic across the Urals, Siberia and the Karakum desert, borrowed its clamshell bonnet styling from the Fiat 127 and its running gear philosophy from nobody: a unitary body with three differentials, sold new in Western Europe from the late 1970s at a fraction of a Land Rover’s price.
The source’s own numbers do not agree with each other for this engine: the detailed model-code table gives 58.8 kW and 118 N·m, the article’s descriptive paragraph gives 76 PS (55.9 kW) and 126 N·m. Neither passage says which is the manufacturer’s own homologation figure. Both are recorded rather than picked between.