The best thing about the world wide web is the opportunity to share one’s interests with others and to help bring disparate bits of information from one field of interest to the attention of those people in other fields who might not otherwise see it. Would that I could lay claim to the work I recently stumbled across at “The Charnel House” but alas I cannot. So, instead I present it to you in all its glory, a photo expose on Soviet Automobiles in the 1930s.
Despite the constraints of a worldwide economic collapse, The 1930s was a time of great change and amazing innovation in many industries. The auto industry made huge leaps in aerodynamics and mechanical design in both America and Europe during the decade as evidenced by such iconic cars as the Chrysler Airflow, the front wheel drive Cord and those famous Auto Union Silver Arrow racers among others. These things are known to all of us who love cars, but what remains as yet undiscovered by the vast majority of us in the Western world are the innovations were taking place in Stalin’s Soviet Union. Now they can been seen, conveniently collected for your enjoyment and edification.
Check it out, It’s worth the click – rosswolfe.wordpress.com
Thomas Kreutzer currently lives in Buffalo, New York with his wife and three children but has spent most of his adult life overseas. He has lived in Japan for 9 years, Jamaica for 2 and spent almost 5 years as a US Merchant Mariner serving primarily in the Pacific. A long time auto and motorcycle enthusiast he has pursued his hobbies whenever possible. He writes for any car webbsite that will have him and enjoys public speaking. According to his wife, his favorite subject is himself.
Ha ha! This thing looks like a snail, or one of M.C. Escher’s “Curl-ups”!
The Russians sure have a sense of humor on occasion, don’t they?
As I am at least half-Russian (don’t know about the other half), at least half of me likes this! I certainly get a kick out of it, FWIW.
Come to think of it, that obvious tacked-on nose reminds me of all the plastic, aftermarket aero-garbage that boy-racers bolt on rather crudely to their junker-worthy Civics…
More like “Cars Not For The Proletariat”. Or “Cars For The Party Elite”.
Most look like poor knockoffs of what was going on in Europe/America at the time. Which pretty much sums up the Soviet car Industry forever. I’m sure there were some talented folks doing some interesting things, but not in conditions that were conducive to make them come to fruition.
Their best work generally was in adapting technology to local conditions: snow mobiles, etc…Maybe I’m being a bit harsh?
How about “Cars For The Soviet Not-Niedermeyers”?
There was a picture of a racing car, how do you have a race in a communist country? Does everyone win or everyone lose?
The Prussian (Polish-Austrian) in me likes this, because of it’s utter weirdness (now you are hearing the British eccentric in me talking).
Take a high-end Western car (in this case, a 1933 Pierce Silver-Arrow) and give it the ol’ ‘Soviet makeover’, and you have the vehicle in the picture.
Ah well the T 34 Tank was the best in the world during WW2.
So they got it right where it counted…Also they had great aeroplane engineers/designers
Untill emigration my sister in law drove an Opel Vectra and was perfectly happy with it .
The Soviet’s “Black Maria” was a car to die for. Literally. According to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, many citizens took a midnight ride in that car to a future at best spent in a Gulag and at worst, an unmarked grave. The NKVD, forerunners of the KGB, did their infamous work in the hours after midnight, to best take advantage of a sleeping populace. Solzhenitsyn’s “Gulag Archipelago” is a chilling read and puts you front and center in what the average citizen faced living a life in fear of that knock on the door after midnight……
Not to be forgotten is the Soviet’s take of the BMW motorcycle, now on sale at today’s friendly Ural Motorcycle dealer.
The Ford A model and B model engine were Russian built they aquired a factory from Henry as did anyone else who put their hand up,those were the first world cars the T & A Fords. My memory tells me the last Model A derivative was built in Russia in 54, A colleague of many years ago told of hearing a Model A engined something driving past while serving in Korea they tracked it down and it was captured Soviet equipment GAZ something a model A with 4×4
Thomas, thanks for sharing my post on Soviet automobiles.
KiwiBryce gets a lot right about the origins of the early Soviet GAZ models. Truth is, they weren’t so much knockoffs as they were direct copies of the early Ford model A. In fact, Albert and Moritz Kahn, the chief architects of Detroit during the 1910s and 1920s, helped design several auto-factories and even contributed to urban planning during the first two Five-Year Plans. Cheliabinsk and Avtostroia [a town literally called “Auto-Building”] were designed with their consultation. American specialists from Ford’s company helped them on-site to engineer the GAZ-A, an almost exact replica of the Ford model A.