With its snub nose and mile-apart headlights, the Niva looks like a dimwitted but scrappy puppy, and the ride is about as comfortable as a minor earthquake. When driving at highway speeds, the wheel squirms in your hands as if you’ve offended it. Gear changes are about as smooth as eating a spoonful of hot gravel, and the gas pedal might as well be made of soft cheese. The Niva is as drafty as a paper bag and about as fast as you’d expect of a Russian car that originated, for all intents and purposes, while Elvis was alive.

If you fill the fuel tank too quickly, gasoline sloshes out onto your shoes. Oil leaks are standard equipment.

We’d only been driving for a few hours when Vlad woke me from a jet-lagged slumber in the back seat. “Do you want to go to a wedding?” he asked.

Having left the highway for the town of Novomoskovsk, we had happened upon the wedding celebration of Julia and Maxim Osipovi, and they invited us for vodka. The couple posed for a while in front of a long line of decommissioned tanks, smiling happily and drinking glass after glass of vodka. Julia waved a small pistol while kissing her new husband, for no reason other than that she liked guns.

“He’s a doctor, you know,” one of their neighbors said.

“Welcome to a real wedding,” Julia’s father said proudly between swigs from a bottle of premium vodka while a cousin offered a plate of dark bread and smoked fish. “This is what it’s all about,” the bride’s father said. “Family.” Then the wedding party jumped into a few cars to continue the celebration elsewhere.

We followed the Don River along the highway that was named after it, stopping along the way in villages and towns. The Niva plowed along, its previous malady mostly forgotten, and it moved at a good clip as the villages rolled by. Even though it shakes, shutters, shimmies and slides, the Niva is a car that feels as if it will always take you where you want to go. It is a happy car, a strong car.