The front-wheel drive model from the Moskvich family was launched in serial production on the AZLK conveyor belt in 1986. The history of the appearance of Moskvich 2141 is connected with radical changes in the Soviet Automobile Industry, when the management of AZLK has completely changed, and the new team has tried to create several projects based on Italian and French models. But the results of negotiations with foreign partners were zero, and the projects started, or rather, the projects, had to be put under the cloth. However, it was necessary to do something, and the design bureaus took up the development of a new car with a front-wheel drive called Moskvich 2141. The model promised to get a promising, modern and body design, and the main technical characteristics.
But in those years in the Soviet automotive industry there was a tendency to copy existing foreign brands. The minister said to the AZLK team that they do not have anything to do with the creation of a competitive car, and it is better to immediately take a suitable analogue abroad, copy it, make a binding to Soviet technologies and put it into serial production. So they did, they looked at the model of the American Chrysler branch in Europe under the name Simca 1308, although it was already obsolete, but titled as "The Best Car of 1976". After studying the situation, we started to work. Several machines were purchased, some were dismantled for aggregates, two cleaned bodies were cut to pieces and soon the outlines of the future car Moskvich 2141, whose characteristics were also supposed to be borrowed from Simca 1308, began to appear.
The body was successful. The impression was spoiled only by the excessively long front overhang, but this disadvantage had to be tolerated, since the engine did not allow shortening the front end. In the rest, Moskvich 2141 looked quite organic, the proportions were ideal, the salon, unlike the previous AZLK models, looked spacious and even comfortable. The luggage compartment corresponded to the classic layout of the hatchback, and the slope of the tailgate gave the developers a surprise. The trunk door glass was positioned so well that even in rainy weather it was not splashed with dirt and remained relatively clean. Thus, Moskvich 2141, reviews already positive, became the first car in the world with a hatchback body that did not need a rear door wiper.
Dimensions of Moskvich 2141 were as follows: length - 4850 mm, width - 1692 mm, height - 1410 mm. The wheelbase is 2580 mm, the ground clearance is 165 mm. Weighed the car 1080 kg. The car was not particularly dynamic, the acceleration from the place to 100 km / h took 19 seconds, which corresponds to the indicators of the most low-power cars of the middle class. Still, the Moskvich 2141 was a model of the latest generation with a number of advantages in the form of an independent lever front suspension type "Ferson", the rear "Torsion Crank", rack and pinion steering and fashionable bumpers, fully integrated in the body profiles. And what is characteristic, Moskvich 2141 in many respects left behind its prototype Simca 1308. Spent gasoline much less, in aerodynamics ahead, in maneuverability did not concede. And in the early nineties, he went ahead on the criteria for engine power, since the car from 1991 to the end of production in 1998, installed American engines FORD RTF, which also produced Ford Fiesta, Ford Sierra and Ford Escort.