Manufacturer IZh Class Compact car Related | Production 1973—1997 Body style 5-door hatchback | |
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Also called Moskvitch 1500 Kombi, Pozdniy IZh (Late IZh) | ||
The IZh 2125 "Kombi" (Russian: ИЖ-2125 Комби, short for "combination") is a compact car produced by the Soviet car manufacturer IZh from 1973 to 1997. It was based on an Izhevsk-modified Moskvitch 412, with the first prototype released in 1972 as a small family car. It was considered to be the first Soviet hatchback (released about a decade before the well-known Lada Samara), though the car actually possesses a station wagon body wherein the "D" pillar has its own support and does not gain from weight reduction (which would position the model more in the liftback family). In Russian literature the car is referred to as liftback. For the same reason, the car was given the "Kombi" nickname, which in a way alludes to the Combi coupé (the word kombi itself meaning "station wagon" in German and Polish, while in Russian a station wagon is called universal).
The Kombi had a notable success in sales within the USSR between 1974 and 1980 due to its durability, off-road capability, increased lifting capacity and was the first Izh car sold for export. Its popularity was also helped by limited competition – station wagon variants of the Lada, Moscow-built Moskvitch and Volga were not as easy to buy as the Kombi. In 1982, the Kombi received a facelift, along with the IZh-produced Moskvitch-412 and IZh-2715 panel van and was then rebranded as the 21251. Among notable features, the car borrowed the dashboard from the Moskvitch 2140 and featured improved seats and headrests.
The modernised IZh-2125 sold into the 1990s. As the Soviet Union collapsed, IZh was first privatized as the open joint stock company "Izhevsk" and slowly started converting their automotive production lines to other kinds of manufacture, such as firearms. In 1995—96, when AZLK's revenue decreased drastically, the company was partially reacquired by AutoVAZ and renamed "IZhAuto". AvtoVAZ managers then discontinued all of IZh's previous models and ran their own ones into production. A new hatchback version was branded IZh 2126 "Oda" and ultimately replaced the Kombi.