CARS OF THE WORLD

UAZ Patriot 2022.

Judging by the events of the last few months, the company UAZ has stopped working on the renewal of its model range.

This is evidenced, in particular, by the absence of news on the official website of the Ulyanovsk automobile plant: the last one is dated early August.

Therefore, it is likely that the UAZ Patriot 2022 will be on sale in its former form for at least a few more months.

At the same time, the company has recently been emphasizing to fans the features of the SUV.

Thus, according to official publications, UAZ is now actively testing the Patriot in different operating conditions.

Recently the manufacturer sent the SUV to the snowy roads of Karelia, where, as the report shows, the car coped with the assigned tasks.

At the same time, UAZ noted the effectiveness of the steering damper.

This part is located in front of the axle. It protects the steering rods and suppresses the vibrations that are transmitted to the steering wheel when driving off-road.

This news is interesting because it indirectly confirms the above statement: the company UAZ is not going to update the Patriot in the near future.

In favor of this assumption speaks the recent statement of the company Isuzu.

Recall that back at the end of last year there was news about the intention of the Japanese manufacturer to team up with UAZ.

More precisely Ulyanovsk plant was going to borrow units from Isuzu for updated Patriot. However, representatives of the Japanese brand denied these rumors.

But now the two companies continue to jointly produce Isuzu N-Series trucks.

This lineup includes trucks with carrying capacity from 3.5 to 33 tons.

For the last year due to the Ulyanovsk automobile plant Isuzu assembled about 3.7 thousand copies of the trucks.

But the Japanese company has no plans to increase its presence in the Russian market so far.

In other words it is not going to increase the volume of truck production because of the too high costs required for this task.

Therefore UAZ, despite the aspirations of the management, has not yet found an investor who will help to correct the financial situation of the company.

Despite this, the company UAZ-Avtokomponent, owned by the Ulyanovsk auto plant, has recently set up production of crankshafts for Hyundai engines.

The corresponding contract was concluded back in 2020. Under the terms of the agreement, UAZ must produce up to 20 thousand crankshafts per month.

But even this will not have a significant effect on the financial situation of the Ulyanovsk auto plant.

The company now needs more substantial investments which will allow it to both expand and update the current model range.

Most probably, in case the problem is solved, the first car that will be upgraded will be the Patriot.

But it is likely that the nearest update will also be of little significance.

In particular, the car can keep the previous 2.7-liter «atmospheric», although last autumn there was information that UAZ is considering adding a turbo-diesel to the engine range of the Patriot.

However, despite the lack of updates, the Ulyanovsk automobile plant, following other manufacturers present in Russia, regularly changes the prices of its products.

According to the January report, the Patriot has gone up in price by 30 thousand rubles. Now the base version of the SUV costs 1,164,000 rubles.

Last year’s statistics show that, probably due to the lack of updates, sales of UAZ vehicles have declined.