OAO Moskvitch is the name of a privatized venture given to the former factory to avoid legal issues after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Since the factory had no assembly branches outside Russia after 1991, its name is largely used today to refer to the building located in the lower eastern part of Moscow.

It was assumed that by improving the quality of life for the affected citizens and providing them with the opportunity to learn to drive during peacetime, they would constitute a cadre of trained drivers for the Red army in the event of armed conflict.

The construction of the Moscow Car Assembly Factory (Russian: Московский автосборочный завод) began in 1929.

The Opelwerk Brandenburg plant had been deeply involved in the Nazi German war effort, producing aircraft engines for the Luftwaffe, and had been heavily damaged by Allied bombing.

However, a number of Kadetts had been captured by the Red Army and were available for study, and was accomplished through joint Soviet-German ventures overseen by the Soviet Military Administration in Germany.

Nonetheless, the majority of stamping dies and tooling were freshly produced in the Soviet Union due to the amount of damage to the factory.

The Moskvitch 402 series could be considered as the first step in Soviet and Russian automotive history towards producing adapted models for various use cases.

[3] Up to half of all Moskvitch 407 production was reserved for export, mainly to the Eastern Bloc countries, Norway, Finland, and France.

The Moskvitch 408 was the first Soviet-built car to be designed with extra safety features in mind, including crumple zones, safer steering column, soft interior parts, seat belts, a padded dashboard, and a split circuit braking system.

The first series of Moskvitch 408 cars had vertical rear lights, two or four round headlights, a front bench seat, and a 4-speed manual transmission with column mounted gear lever.

It had the same engine and transmission as its predecessor, but an updated body fitted with rectangular headlights and horizontal rear lights, with triangular turn signal markers mounted on tailfins.

In 1966 during a visit by French President Charles de Gaulle to the Soviet Union, an agreement was signed between MZMA and Renault.

The 412 was the first Moskvitch vehicle to pass safety-feature tests in France, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Sweden and West Germany.

SATRA Motors entered M-412s in the Group One Production Saloon Car Championship in 1972 and 1973, where it easily beat "sharp-handling but underpowered" British Hillman Imps and Austin Minis.

[citation needed] The bankruptcy of OAO Moskvitch was officially announced in 2006, and the company was liquidated the following year.

[15][16] Furthermore, traffic police in Moscow Oblast and Stavropol Krai began to be equipped with Moskvitch 3e electric crossovers.

[17][18] In June 2023, Hans Peter Moser was appointed General Manager of Moskvitch, replacing Dmitry Valentinovich Pronin, who would move to the position of chairman of the board of directors.

[19][20] Moser had previously worked for the Russian truck manufacturer Kamaz, as well as the German industrial firm Knorr-Bremse.

These vehicles were imported partially built from the Soviet Union, with their engines and transmission installed after arrival in Belgium.

Some of these vehicles were identical in configuration to those produced by Moskvitch/AZLK, while some, like their Belgian counterparts, made use of British origin Perkins diesel engines.