Once some music com­poser said  that “There are only seven notes which com­pose all the music in the world.  No wod­ner some songs sound alike”.  Undoubt­edly,  all cars  have got four wheels, so pla­gia­rism in the auto­mo­bile indus­try is hard to pinch.  In this arti­cle we delib­er­ately ignore a pop­u­lar Soviet point of view that a steam loco­mo­tive, an air­plane and the radio were not invented in Rus­sia.  All we attempt here is to make a small digres­sion into the his­tory of Soviet auto­mo­bile indus­try in order to iden­tify its ori­gins and its development.

ZIS-110

ZIS-110

A Russ­ian  philoso­pher Vasiliy Rosanov once noted that in Rus­sia every sin­gle case of wealth orig­i­nates from theft or extor­tion.  His­tor­i­cally, the econ­omy of the Russ­ian Empire before the 1917 was so deeply inte­grated into the Euro­pean econ­omy that the exchange of ideas, some­thing, which now would have been hugely copy­righted, was very com­mon.  Like, in 1901 in St Peters­burg the car­riage fac­tory Freze and the Riga bicy­cle fac­tory Leit­ner suc­cess­fully assem­bled the French oil engines De Dion Buton as part of Russ­ian car­riages. Another fac­tory Aksai in Rostov-on-Don pur­chased the license for the pro­duc­tion of the Amer­i­can Oldsmo­bile Carved Dash.  In 1906 a Russ­ian engi­neer Boris Lut­skoy organ­ised the assem­bling of  Mer­cedes cars for the Russ­ian mar­ket. At last, the main pride of Rus­sia – the auto­mo­bile Russo-Balt — was made from for­eign parts – the chas­sis with four-cylinder engine was adopted from a Bel­gian com­pany with a Swiss name Fondu.

The Octo­ber rev­o­lu­tion of 1917 cre­ated  a pop­u­lar in  Rus­sia myth that all things have been invented in, well, Rus­sia.  The rea­sons for that would be merely ide­o­log­i­cal: the new born coun­try needed new morale.  Accord­ing to an old Soviet joke, even “ele­phants come from Rus­sia”.  The most pro­gres­sive coun­try in the World, as coined by the rev­o­lu­tion­ary com­mu­nists, should strike the rest of the world with advanced tech­nolo­gies, the pro­pa­ganda advised.  In order to cre­ate the real Soviet cars,  the com­mu­nists estab­lished the Research Auto­mo­bile Lab­o­ra­tory (later known as NAMI). The very first Soviet motor car NAMI-1 was actu­ally a grad­u­a­tion project by a young engi­neer Kon­stan­tin Shara­pov.   The car turned out to be so suc­cess­ful that it was put into pro­duc­tion right away. Later,  in 1979, Kon­stan­tin con­fessed to copy­ing  the charts for NAMI-1 off the Czech Tatra-11.

Famous NAMI-1

The noto­ri­ous NAMI-1

Dur­ing the period from 1927 to 1930,  the fac­tory assem­bled 403 NAMI-1 mod­els.  Despite all its advan­tages, this car was not planned for the mass pro­duc­tion.  At the same time,  any man­ager of the robust mind realised that the Soviet Indus­tri­al­i­sa­tion needed mass pro­duc­tion.   The Soviet Rus­sia wanted giant fac­to­ries, but what would be the product?

In 1929 the USA was stricken by a severe eco­nomic cri­sis.   As the result of this cri­sis, the pro­duc­tion of Chevro­let halved, the pro­duc­tion of Ford dropped three times!   Despite the absence of diplo­matic rela­tions between the USSR and the USA, both Chevro­let and Ford offered their pro­duc­tion to the Soviet gov­ern­ment.  No need to guess,  shortly after­ward the awfully cracked Russ­ian roads were voy­aged by the daz­zling Amer­i­can beau­ties of all kinds.   The long rally was won by Ford A and, con­se­quently, this car was put into pro­duc­tion in the USSR.

Soviet Ford

The Soviet Ford

The first auto­mo­biles under the brand GAZ left the fac­tory in Decem­ber, 1932.  Quite rapidly these cars got nick­named as “Soviet Fords”.   Even the logo was very sim­i­lar – blue oval with the brand GAZ instead of Ford. The car was not a suc­cess, how­ever,  as the open body and the lack of boot turned to be its main down­sides. Within 5 years the new car GAZ M1 replaced the old model.   Now the body was copied from 1934 model of Ford, although the model was adapted to suit the severe Russ­ian con­di­tions. The front sus­pen­sion was based on two springs rather than on one, unlike  in the Amer­i­can ver­sion, and the wheels were of a dif­fer­ent shape.   Later on, the design charts for  GAZ M1 were utilised  for almost all Soviet-made cars.

Cloned Soviet cars

To be contunied.

Source: autopilot.kommersant.ru (in Russian)

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Related posts:

  1. Soviet Cars: His­tory of the Copy-and-Paste Indus­try  —  Part 2 of 3
  2. Soviet Cars: His­tory of the Copy-and-Paste Indus­try  —  Part 3 of 3
  3. Best of Win­ter 2009  –  2010
  4. Soviet Auto­mo­bile Indus­try  —  Part 2 of 2
  5. Soviet Auto­mo­bile Indus­try  —  Part 1 of 2

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