Short answers, pulled from the story.
Tolyatti is home to AvtoVAZ, Russia's largest car manufacturer and the maker of the Lada. The factory employs around 110,000 people and dominates the city's economy, earning Tolyatti comparisons to Detroit and the nickname "Russia's Motown".
The city was renamed in 1964 after Palmiro Togliatti, the longest-serving secretary of the Italian Communist Party. Togliatti had been instrumental in arranging the joint venture between Fiat and the Soviet government to build the AvtoVAZ plant, and he died in August 1964 in Yalta.
Tolyatti was founded as a fortress in 1737 by the Russian statesman Vasily Tatishchev. It was originally called Stavropol and was built partly to house ethnic Kalmyk people who had converted to Russian Orthodox Christianity.
Construction of the Kuybyshev Dam and Hydroelectric Station on the Volga River created the Kuybyshev Reservoir, which flooded the original location of the city entirely. The entire city was rebuilt on a new site.
Olympic gymnastics champion Alexei Nemov, NHL players Alexei Kovalev and Ilya Bryzgalov (both Stanley Cup winners), and professional tennis player Daria Kasatkina were all born in or moved to Tolyatti. The city's sports infrastructure was developed deliberately as part of a Soviet model-city program.
Tolyatti recorded 550 commissioned killings between 1998 and 2004. Five of those killed were journalists, including two editors of the local newspaper Tolyattinskoye Obozreniye, Valery Ivanov and Alexei Sidorov, who were murdered in 2002-2003 after the paper investigated a local crime group.