What's a Cold War family car doing at Ironstone Concour in Murphy's CA? Steve dives deep into this mystery with a very unusual car on US roads: the GAZ Volga!
The first Volga model was originally developed as a replacement for the GAZ-M20 Pobeda mid-size car which was produced from 1946. Despite its fastback design with Ponton body styling, the evolution of postwar automotive design and powertrain meant that in 1951 a brief was issued for its eventual replacement. In 1952 this matured into two projects: Zvezda ("Star"), an evolution of Pobeda's fastback contour with panoramic windows and large tailfins, and the Volga with its conventional styling, which was more realistically suited for production in the 1950s.
By the spring of 1954, the Volga prototypes were being test driven. The new car introduced a range of additions and advantages over the Pobeda. In addition to being larger, it had single panoramic forward and rear windscreens, a larger four-cylinder overhead-valve engine, central lubrication system of the main chassis elements, hypoid rear axle and an automatic hydromechanical gearbox. The car's exterior was designed by Lev Yeremeev and, though influenced by North American vehicles of the same period, the project was mostly independent, with an exception for the automatic transmission that was derived from the 3-speed Ford-O-Matic. After thorough testing of the car, which lasted for a further two years, a go-ahead was finally given by the state, and the first pre-production batch left GAZ on 10 October 1956.
Although there were many models and versions of the car, its production can nonetheless be split into three distinct generations and two derivatives. In total 639,478 Volgas were built from 1956 until 1970.
28 авг 2024
