Remember all the classic Lada jokes of the 80s and 90s of the sort that one could crank out endlessly because the patterns are so reliable? Jokes like these: "What do you call a classic Skoda? A Lada" and "What do you call the shock absorbers on a Lada? Passengers".
Well, even though a partnership between Renault's F1 division and Lada sounds like a good foundation for a new joke, it isn't. Seriously now, Renault announced today a sponsorship deal with Russia's AvtoVAZ that will see branding from Lada on the chassis of the Renault F1 Team R30 race cars during the 2010 season.