TOGLIATTI, November 29 (Itar-Tass) —— Russia’s major carmaker AVTOVAZ launched commercial production of LADA Granta cars on Tuesday, the plant’s press centre said, adding that the first car is painted in the “white cloud” colour.

In the process of the pre-commercial assembling, the company produced several hundred of LADA Grantas, Chairman of the LADA Granta project Oleg Grunenkov said, adding that the cars will be supplied to dealer centres in December.

“I think that LADA Granta will become one of the most popular cars by 2020,” he said.

LADA Granta is a car of economy class with front-wheel drive, which is designated on the Kalina platform, “but it will be more safe, modern and comfortable than Kalina,” the press centre quoted AVTOVAZ president Igor Komarov as saying earlier.

AVTOVAZ will start the production of LADA Grantas in two basic versions – “standard” and “normal.”

The Granta range, known internally as VAZ 2190, includes a sedan, followed by a hatchback, and is expected to replace the LADA Kalina and Samara. When the Granta goes into production at the AVTOVAZ home plant in Togliatti, production of the older LADA models will be shifted to Izhevsk.

The car price in the “standard” version amounts to 229,000 roubles (USD 1 = RUB 31.32) (for December 2011), while a car in the “normal” version costs 256,000 roubles, which makes cars of this model the lowest-priced cars built in Europe.

The new LADA is mainly designed for the Russian market, but the management of AVTOVAZ does not ruled out the possibility of starting exports of the car to Western Europe, the press centre said.

The new model was designed with the use of Renault-Nissan digital technologies and methods. Granta has an eight-valve engine with a volume of 1.6 litres, which makes a car of the model comfortable both inside and outside of a city. The maximum speed is 167 kilometres per hour. Fuel consumption in a mixed regime slightly exceeds seven litres per 100 kilometres.