UK in 1974, also sold well, despite its outdated Fiat-sourced design; with buyers mostly being attracted by its low price. By the late-1980s, with the four-wheel drive Niva and a front-wheel drive hatchback, the Samara, complementing the long-running Riva, Lada sales in Britain had amounted to more than 30,000 a year (some 1.5% of the new car market), but tailed off after 1990 as a result of growing competition and a lack of new model launches. Imports to Britain finally ceased in 1997 due to Lada's difficulties in meeting emissions requirements. Skoda also enjoyed similarly decent sales of its well-priced rear-engined saloon cars during the 1970s and 1980s, going from strength to strength in the 1990s following its takeover by Volkswagen and the launch of new model ranges with modern technology and styling. Zastava's Yugo-badged cars, based on Fiat designs from the 1970s, also sold reasonably well in Britain during the 1980s, but the carmaker was forced to halt imports in 1992 due to sanctions imposed on Yugoslavia as a result of the civil war there. Polish carmaker FSO imported its version of the Fiat 125 to Britain from 1975, later launching a hatchback model (the Polonez) alongside it. However, by 1998, Skoda was the only Eastern European carmaker still exporting cars to Britain, now competing with budget-priced Asian cars from the likes of Daewoo, Kia, Hyundai and Proton. Nissan had axed the Datsun brand by 1984 and used its own name on all cars, and in 1986 opened a factory in Britain near Sunderland, which produced the mid-range Bluebird hatchbacks and saloons, although it was the Japanese-built Micra which was the company's best-selling car in Britain during the 1980s. The decade also saw the arrival of purpose-built people carriers on the British market, starting with the Japanese Mitsubishi Space Wagon in 1984, and then the market-leading Renault Espace in 1985, but by the end of the decade this type of vehicle still had only a very small share of the British market and there were still no British-built people carriers available, although a few seven-seater estate models including Austin Rover's Montego were being produced. The decade also saw a fall in demand for sports cars, perhaps due to the rising popularity of "hot hatchbacks" (high performance versions of hatchback cars), and so a number of manufacturers pulled out of the sports car market. British Leyland finished production of its