In 1960 the con­struc­tion of a huge car plant in Ukraine was fin­ished and the new car “Zaporozhec” ZAZ-965 (later nick­named “Hump­backed”) was offered for sale. In terms of design, it was a unique car despite the numer­ous talks that it was just a replica of Volk­swa­gen “Bee­tle” and Fiat “Topolino”. This car had a hard roof (unlike Fiat) and an air-cooled engine (unlike “Bee­tle”). This small inex­pen­sive car rapidly gained high pop­u­lar­ity with peo­ple not only in the USSR but also abroad.

Con­tinue read­ing →