SAMARA, May 16 (Itar-Tass) —— The Russian major car-maker AVTOVAZ has manufactured the 27th-millionth car on Wednesday. A silver-white hatchback LADA Priora became the “jubilee” car, the company’s press centre said.

Traditionally, the car will be removed to the enterprise’s museum.

“Since 2007 up to date, LADA Priora has been among the most popular cars on the Russian market,” Director of the LADA Priora project Anatoly Moskalyuk said, adding that AVTOVAZ plans to sell cars of this model up to 2016.

Already this year, the company plans to install new options at a car, including side airbags, a newly-designed pilot wheel and ABS of new generation, he said. In addition, the company plans to carry out face-lift, which will embrace not only the passenger compartment, but also several external components, the manager said.

The previous “jubilee” car was produced on August 9, 2011. Back then, it was a “while-cloud painted” LADA Kalina sedan in the luxury modification, the press centre reaffirmed.

The first millionth car was manufactured at the plant in 1973.

AVTOVAZ is Russia’s major car manufacturer, also known as VAZ, Volzhsky Auto Plant, and better known to the world as LADA, was set up in the late 1960s in collaboration with Italy’s Fiat. It is 25 percent owned by French giant Renault.

It produces nearly one million cars a year, including the Kalina, LADA110 and the NIVA off-road vehicles.

However, the original Fiat-24-based vehicle, the VAZ-2102 and its derivatives, remain the models most associated with its LADA brand.

The VAZ factory is one of the biggest in the world, with over 144 kilometres of production lines, and is unique in that most of the components for the cars are made in-house.

The original LADA was a basic car, lacking in most luxuries expected in cars of its time and was patterned after the Fiat 124. LADAs were available in several Western countries during the 1970s and 1980s, including Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands, though trade sanctions banned their export to the United States. Sales to Italy were forbidden by the agreement between the Soviet government and Fiat, to protect Fiat from cheap imports in its home market.