The Lada Niva, one of the world's oldest cars, is getting an update for 2020

If you think the Nissan Frontier is getting long in the tooth, trek out to Russia and ask for the keys to a Lada 4x4. It was born as the Niva in 1977, when Jimmy Carter was in the White House, it has been in continuous production since, and it's now receiving an array of updates for the 2020 model year.

Lada, which sits next to Mitsubishi under the Renault-Nissan umbrella, explained the 4x4's upgrades were made primarily in the name of comfort and safety. The Cold War-era vestige receives a new-look dashboard with a more powerful climate control system, 12-volt outlets in the center console, and a redesigned analog instrument cluster that gains a small LCD screen that displays data fed by an on-board computer. The term "infotainment system" hasn't entered the 4x4's lexicon yet.

The 2020 model offers the front passengers more comfortable seats equipped with what Lada describes as "a more reliable folding mechanism," plus headrests for the rear bench. There are also front cupholders, new sunvisors, brighter map lights, an emergency response system linked to the driver-side airbag, as well as better sound insulation to make the cabin quieter.

That's about it; the rest of the 4x4 remains largely unchanged. Buyers can still select the regular model, which wears 1970s-style metal bumpers that stick out like diving boards, or a sleeker-looking trim named Urban which receives body-colored bumpers that are more neatly integrated into the body. Stylists gave the front end a minor nip-and-tuck a few years ago, and Lada replaced the horizontal rear lights with vertical ones in 1993 in order to extend the hatch, but that's the extent of the major visual modifications the model has received since its inception, when product planners asked engineers to create a Renault 5 dropped on a Land Rover chassis.

2020 won't bring any mechanical modifications. According to Hagerty, the 4x4 carries on with a tried-and-true 1.7-liter, gasoline-burning four-cylinder that sends 83 horsepower and 98 pound-feet of torque to the four wheels via a five-speed manual transmission. It's the only engine available.

If you really want to pamper yourself, the list of extra-cost options includes air conditioning and heated front seats. Lada will publish additional information such as when the updated 4x4 is scheduled to reach showrooms and how much it will cost in the coming weeks. What's certain is that the rumors claiming the 4x4 wouldn't live to see the end of the 2010s were completely false.

To add context, the 4x4 currently starts at 11,990 euros (about $13,200) in Germany, which is one of the only western European nations where it's still sold. It enjoys a small but extremely loyal following among hunters, off-roaders, and adventurers on a budget — for a while, Lada even offered a hunter-spec model with two seats, a partition, and shotgun racks. It's also widely distributed in eastern Europe, and it remains an incredibly popular car in Russia due to its remarkable off-road prowess.