A Soviet-Era Lada Rally Car Just Hit eBay For $71,500—And It Actually Deserves the Price

When you’re browsing eBay for classic rally cars, you’re probably hunting for a Lancia Delta, maybe a Ford Escort RS—not exactly a Lada. Yet here’s a 1981 Lada 2105 VFTS sitting on the German auction site with a buy-now price of €63,000 (about $71,500), and somehow it doesn’t feel completely insane.

This isn’t some basement project car. It’s a legit Austrian Rally Championship competitor that spent the better part of a decade doing actual work—real competition, real drivers, real wins. The fact that it wears a Soviet badge is almost beside the point. Almost.

From Factory Worker to Rally Machine

The 2105 rolled off the AvtoVAZ assembly line in 1981 as a perfectly ordinary Soviet sedan. Four years later, it got conscripted into something far more interesting. Austrian importer ÖAF, with rally driver Rudi Stohl steering the program, converted the little Lada into a proper Group B rally car certified for both competition and road use. From 1985 through 1989, three drivers rotated through the seat—Strobl, Rainer Walenczko, and Engelbert Helm—running the Austrian Rally Championship without missing a season. That’s durability and consistency you don’t see with weekend warrior specials.

After its competitive life ended, the car did what sensible retired racers do: it vanished into an Austrian garage for three decades. The current owner unearthed it in 2018 and spent years bringing it back. By 2020, it had earned FIA Historic Technical Passport certification and met B222 homologation standards—the real deal, not a cash-grab resto-mod.

The Hardware That Makes It Count

Visually, the VFTS screams vintage rally aggression. Wide fender flares, a aggressive chin spoiler, a ducktail trunk wing, and those essential auxiliary spotlights all add up to a car that looks like it has business to conduct on gravel. Five-spoke alloys, plastic windows for weight savings, and a stripped-down interior—two racing buckets, a roll cage, and a handful of gauges—complete the picture. It’s not pretty by modern standards, but it has character that money can’t buy new.

What really matters is under the hood. The naturally aspirated 1.6-liter engine gets twin Weber carburetors and a high-flow intake manifold. That bumps output from the factory’s anemic 75 horsepower up to 128 hp—a solid figure for a car that tips the scales at roughly 920 kg (2,028 lbs). A short-ratio five-speed manual dog-box feeds power to a Torsen limited-slip differential, giving it the mechanical hardware you’d want for actual competition driving.

Why This Actually Makes Sense (Yes, Really)

Dropping $71,500 on what started life as basic Soviet transport sounds delusional until you understand the real market. Historic rally machinery has legitimate collector strength. Group B rally cars from the 1980s represent a specific moment in motorsport—before regulations tightened, when homemade specials could legitimately compete at a high level. That era has real appeal to enthusiasts who value authenticity and provenance over badge prestige.

The Lada 2105 also has unexpected historical pedigree hiding beneath that unfashionable exterior. The 2105 is an evolution of the VAZ-2101, which was itself based on the Fiat 124 sedan from the 1960s. That Fiat connection matters: Fiat’s own 131 became the legendary 131 Abarth Rally, which won three manufacturer’s titles and two driver’s championships in the World Rally Championship. The bloodline is real, even if it got diluted and Sovietized along the way.

The Hard Question

Will this Lada find a buyer? That depends on whether the historic rally community values competition history and restoration quality above marque snobbery. It’s not Stratos money, and it’s not even typical Escort RS territory. But for someone who actually cares about what a car did rather than what badge it wears, there’s a legitimate argument here. This thing has documented championship credentials, proper FIA papers, and mechanical bones that actually work. That’s rare—and expensive—regardless of where it was built.

The real story isn’t that a Lada is expensive. It’s that a forgotten Soviet competition car has outlasted and out-credentialed dozens of fancier European rally machines that are gathering dust in private collections. Sometimes the underdog is the underdog for a reason.

Sources: Carscoops