The Moskvich brand story and the Moskvich 5
Customers ask about the name more than anything else on the car, and the answers available online tend to be either nostalgic or dismissive. Neither is much use. Here is the actual sequence of events, and where the Moskvich 5 sits in it.
The original factory
Moskvich began as a Moscow car plant in the years around the Second World War, and the name — it means, roughly, a native of Moscow — became one of the best-known automotive badges in the Eastern bloc. Through the post-war decades the factory turned out compact saloons and estates in very large numbers, cars designed to be repaired by their owners with ordinary tools.
Those cars developed a specific reputation: simple, tough in the ways that mattered, unrefined in every way that did not. They were exported widely across the bloc and in smaller numbers to Western Europe, which is why the name still means something to people who have never seen one.
The collapse
The 1990s ended it. A Soviet-era manufacturer built around planned production and a captive market had very little to offer once both disappeared and imported second-hand cars arrived. Output fell away through the decade, production wound down in the early 2000s, and the badge went quiet for roughly twenty years.
This is the part most retrospectives skip, and it matters, because it means there is no unbroken engineering lineage between the old cars and the new one. Whatever the modern Moskvich is, it is not a continuation of a design tradition.
The revival
The name returned in the 2020s on a new range of vehicles, and the mechanism is the important detail. Rather than developing cars from scratch — which takes years and enormous capital — the revived brand launched with vehicles based on existing Chinese designs, produced under the Moskvich badge.
The name came back. The original engineering did not, and nobody involved has claimed otherwise.
This approach is neither unusual nor dishonest. Badge engineering has been standard practice across the industry for decades, and a great many respected nameplates have at some point sold a car designed by somebody else.
Where the Moskvich 5 fits
The Moskvich 5 is a rebadged JAC Sehol X6. JAC is a large, long-established Chinese manufacturer and the Sehol X6 is a mainstream compact crossover built in volume.
For anyone assessing the car rather than the story, that is good news. A vehicle built on a high-volume platform has had its component problems found and fixed at scale, and there is a real supply chain behind it. A revived brand attempting a clean-sheet design would be a far riskier proposition for an early buyer.
So what is the car, honestly?
A five-door, five-seat compact crossover roughly 4.5 metres long, 1.85 wide and 1.70 tall, with a 1.5-litre turbo petrol engine — the only engine offered — producing between about 136 and 184bhp depending on version, driving the front wheels through a CVT automatic.
In other words, an entirely conventional modern crossover. The interesting thing about it is the badge on the front, and the badge has almost nothing to do with how it drives.
What happened to the old cars
A brief detour, because people ask. Surviving examples of the original Moskvich saloons are now firmly in classic territory, maintained by enthusiasts rather than used as transport. They were designed in an era when a car was expected to be repaired by its owner, which is precisely why so many have survived: simple mechanicals, thick metal and no electronics to fail irreparably.
The contrast with the modern car is total. The Moskvich 5 is a contemporary vehicle with the electronic architecture, safety systems and emissions equipment that implies, and none of it is owner-serviceable in the way a 1970s saloon was. Anyone hoping the revived badge brought back the old philosophy will be disappointed, and anyone hoping it did not will be relieved.
Does the history matter to a driver?
Practically, no. The car behaves like what it is rather than what its name suggests, and nobody who hires one from us has ever reported a moment of Soviet character. Emotionally it matters a good deal, which is why we keep getting asked.
Where it does have a real effect is on the market around the car: a revived badge with a short trading history has a thinner used market and fewer specialists who have worked on one. That is a consequence of the story, and it is the only one with a price attached.
If you want to see one
There are not many in this country, which is most of why we ended up running one. If curiosity rather than transport is what brought you here, a day is enough to satisfy it — and hiring the Moskvich 5 in Salford is considerably easier than importing one.