(first posted 8/29/2018) This summer, my uncle (who also happens to be my boss) gave me an unusual working task: to find a nice, restorable ZIM GAZ-12 for him and manage the restoration project. The quest has proved futile so far, but at least the process was both entertaining and informative. One of the more unusual finds I’d like to share with the CC readers. And, first of all, sorry for the low quality of the photos – that’s what the seller provided me with, and going all the way to the city of Samara to see this car in person is not exactly at the top of my priority list.
So, what we see here is essentially a ZIM GAZ-12 / Chayka GAZ-13 hybrid, and it is very clearly based on the older model’s body shell. The center section is almost unchanged except for the windshield, which originally consisted of two flat pieces; the one in this car came from the Volga GAZ-24 or a subsequent model. Perhaps not the best choice style-wise, but still a practical and popular modification back in the day. A lot of Pobyedas have undergone the same kind of plastic surgery in 1960s & 70s, a one-piece curved windshield from the Moskvitch-407 replacing the original split one. It also never looked just right, but the owners didn’t care.
The way this windshield fits the greenhouse actually reminds us of the fact that the ZIM was not a very large car; or, at least, not very wide – just barely wider than the Volga. Its interior was long, with three rows of seats, but, as far as I understand, quite narrow compared to the contemporary American full-size cars. My guess is that this was done mostly to save the weight, which was still somewhat overwhelming for a 3.5-liter flathead six – and also probably because due to the time constraints it was necessary to utilize a slightly modified version of the Pobyeda front suspension, and its track could be stretched only so far.
No wonder that the designers of the ZIM had problems with making a backseat that allowed three people to sit abreast – as the story goes, that was the reason for making the rear fenders of the ZIM to bulge out of the sides of the car, which allowed for a slightly wider rear axle track – and, correspondingly, a somewhat wider backseat, making three-across seating possible; today it is more commonly said that this styling cue was just cribbed from a contemporary Buick of Cadillac.
Notice that all the welding seams are completely hidden with lead – someone tried really hard to make this car look decent and clean, as if it was like this from the factory. One cannot judge the quality of the bodywork based on the photos alone, but the fact that the whole thing did not fall apart or rust into nonexistence in something like 40+ years (this kind of conversion was popular in the 1960s and early 70s, and the GAZ-24 windshield was not available before 1970) tells us something.
The seller suggests that the conversion was made by either some Car Repair Plant or a well-equipped workshop that belonged to some large official organization, and I tend to agree with this. Unfortunately, there seem to be no maker’s markings on this car that could tell us the exact truth. But, anyway, the supposed quality of the bodywork and the unavailability of the Chayka parts to the general public makes this version quite credible.
At the tail end of the car, the Chayka tailfins are somewhat crudely grafted onto the ZIM trunk. The rear bumper is really a pathetic excuse for one, combining a shortened center section of the Chayka rear bumper with sawed off pieces of the GAZ-24 bumper, as well as some hand-made sheet metal pieces. It is possible that originally a complete shortened Chayka bumper was used, because I just can’t imagine someone going to great pains to hand fit all the body parts and hide the seams, and then making something that crude for the rear bumper; but alas – even if it was, it is no longer here.
It should be mentioned that there is a much better known type of GAZ-13 / GAZ-12 hybrid – a Chayka body shell with ZIM front and rear clips added to it, nicknamed “the Muckox” or “the Dunkox” (also, “The Last Bastard” by classic car photographer Alexander “Zoobahstik” Novikov).
These cars, according to some sources, were produced in small quantities by a Car Repair Plant that belonged to the Ministry of Defense for the officials who wanted all of the roominess, comfort and luxury of the Chayka, but in a more humble-looking package. However, the most recent work on this subject, the second volume of Vadim Chelak’s “Flight of the Chayka” (Feb. 2018), is very skeptical about such possibility. He also describes another Chayka / ZIM hybrid, found in the Moscow region, that may look superficially quite similar to the one featured in this post – with the exception of the windshield, which originates from a Renault Fregate – but in fact is quite different, because it uses Chayka chassis and lower body, with a ZIM greenhouse simply grafted onto it.
My thoughts on this subject are that the hybrids which combined Chayka body with ZIM front and rear clips could probably be built in some quantity as fleet vehicles for the humble officials, but the ones which used the ZIM body shell were almost certainly custom-built for some private owners who wanted to “modernize” their ZIMs and make them look more prestigious (brand-new Chaykas were never sold to individual owners, but ZIMs had been, and in relatively large quantities). It just doesn’t make any sense otherwise.
Here’s a picture from the above-mentioned book that features three of the known Chayka hybrids – two Chayka / ZIMs and one Chayka / Mercedes-Benz (recently destroyed by a car collector to salvage the pre-war Mercedes chassis). It seems that the above described hybrid from Samara is quite different from these two and has not yet found its way into history books.
The GAZ itself also came up with a somewhat similar car in mid-1950s, the GAZ-12V, but this project never went anywhere.
By the way, the asking price is quite reasonable for a ZIM in this kind of condition (roughly $10,000) – but I just can’t imagine what would be the right thing to do with it. To restore it “as is” ? To remove the Chayka parts and turn it back into a regular ZIM? To customize it even further ?..
All I can say without a doubt is that this is one weird car and the seller will have a hard time selling it.
Looks like a mish-mash of 50s GM (Cadillac and Chevy) with touches of Packard and Studebaker thrown in.
Also looks like it would be impossible to ever dent it, short of a nuclear explosion.
That front end screams ’56 Packard Patrician to me…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packard_Patrician#1955%E2%80%931956
And the back end says ’56 Lincoln Premiere to my eyes…
https://www.hemmings.com/blog/2016/01/18/prominent-premiere-1956-lincoln-premiere/
(scroll down on the second link for the rear view)
I was thinking Packard too. I’ll bet these things are built like the proverbial tank. I wonder how thick those body panels are.
Not very thick, actually. They tried to make the car as light as possible, while also retaining the strength. The Chayka is a body-on-frame car, so the outer body panels are not load-bearing & actually quite thin, therefore dent quite easily. As proven recently by this unfortunate accident (which by the way also involves a taxicab, just like the Impala crash I’ve made a post about here at CC).
Does this brand have any connection with GAC China? I’m just asking because sometimes when I look around in the german marketplace (“mobile.de”) I find those russian cars filed under GAC. Of course this can just be coincindence, but sometimes they are pretty expensive and in my hunch this doesn’t make sense at all. But maybe GAZ Russia was bought off by GAC China- and then I would make sense.
The car in the middle is a normal GAC China car (from Italy, but ad is placed in Germany).
The lower photo, the GAC Andere, is a Chaika … that’s what the Cyrillic (Russian) script on the hood reads.
Oh. I have no idea about that GAC. Actually, only the car in the middle photo seems to be related to that factory, and the rest of the photos possibly just have misplaced captions. The GAZ-69 (top photo) was produced in China by BAW (Beijing Automobile Works), but I cannot say whether this particular car is original Russian production or a Chinese copy.
That 1942 hood just doesn’t work with that 1956 grille
The illustrations of these various soviet era luxury cars makes an eloquent, wordless argument for western, free market capitalism.
Maybe, if your main objective in life is to have cars looking a certain way.
These cars raise a good question about preservation. What do we value more? Originality or authenticity? For example, restoring the Mercedes-based Chaika to its original specifications also destroys a good amount of history as well, thus making it non-authentic.
Anyway, these mongrel-cars are serving as an interesting glimpse into the past when people had to make do with whatever they had.
Exactly.
I especially like the idea behind the Mercedes/Chayka:
So, you are Alexander Pokryshkin, a famous WW2 flying ace and a Marshal of the Soviet Air Force, and you have an old German luxury convertible, with good chassis/drivetrain and not-so-good body that is stylistically outdated and physically falling apart; there’s nothing even vaguely similar that you can buy brand new, but hey ! You can get your hands on a Chayka body and have the money and connections to get it professionally fitted to that chassis of yours at some military Car Repair Plant. Voila – here’s your brand new (almost…), modern-looking, Mercedes-Benz powered convertible. That’s how things were done back then, if you wanted badly enough to get what you could not.
The subject car has Packard, Lincoln and Cadillac features. The cream and maroon model looks like a ’42-’48 senior Buick in the front (especially the hood), and the car with the wraparound windshield has what appears to be a knockoff of a ’48 Cadillac grille, with a 1955-’56 Chrysler windshield. The USSR was never shy about blatantly copying U.S. luxury cars. They were doing it long before the Chinese started building counterfeit Jeep Cherokees and Range Rovers. Very interesting post.
Well, I’d say that “blatantly copying” is a bit overstatement in this case.
As for using Western experience extensively, you should remember that in 1940s and even 1950s the USSR still did not have a very strong economic base compared to the United States or even some of the European countries. And the automotive industry was still in the early stages of formation.
In the US, hundreds of new cars and trucks were developed each year by several dozens of different manufacturers; many of them failed from technical and/or commercial points of view, some were a success. The US could afford that; even if a whole automotive manufacturing company went belly-up, like Studebaker-Packard – the economy as whole didn’t suffer from that too much.
In the USSR, at the same time, it was usually only viable to develop and prepare for production one car or truck of a particular class at a time. And it had to be a success, no matter by what means. The price of a technical failure of, e.g. a new model of a truck, would have been too great for the economy of the country as a whole. And it was not until late 1960s that it was deemed economically possible to have more than one car of the same class simultaneously in production.
Until maybe mid-1950s, the specification for a new model that was given to the designers by the Ministry of Automotive Industry quite often explicitly stated that they must base their work on “tried and proven foreign examples” (with an unofficial phone call naming particular models recommended for study following it).
The reason for this is quite clear and it was trivial risk reduction: more often than not there was neither time, nor resources to toy with new, untested ideas in production vehicles. Let someone else do the dirty work, because we’re gonna have enough trouble with putting that thing into serial production anyway.
It’s not to say, of course, that, unfortunately, sometimes they did not differentiate between form and function. Actually, it seems that using already proven elements of styling was sometimes seen as almost as crucial to the success of a car as the technical stuff. Like, no one made the GAZ stylists put what was clearly a Cadillac grille onto the ZIM, they did it on their own volition; perhaps knowing that it would make it more acceptable for the Ministry officials, but still. Actually, that seems to be a complicated psychological phenomenon, closely connected to the cult of everything foreign that formed in the USSR during 1960s and 1970s, and really flourished in the late 1980s and 1990s. A good topic for a scientific study, really.
That’s one cool and unique piece of iron. So many styling themes to explore. Thanks for sharing it with us! 🙂
My first impression, based on the front 3/4 view was postwar Chrysler corporation center section married to mid ‘50s Packard front and Checker Marathon rear.
Just messin around, here’s a clearer version of one of the photos.
When I saw “ZIM / Chayka Hybrid” I thought, whoa, a Soviet-era hybrid-electric drivetrain? After all those Soviets claimed to have invented everything.
These old beasts are fascinating. Sort of a view of fifties American cars through a strange reflection.
Well, there actually was a Soviet vehicle with a hybrid drivetrain…
I knew it! That must be the hybrid system controller strapped in behind the cab.
It would be worth buying just for the sheer rarity, it could be the only one left and appears to be in good condition.
I would proudly drive that. Neat history. E.
Making a Mercedes look like a Chaika seems somewhat backwards. Otherwise, the GAZ/Chaika hybrids seem to presage the addition of modern styling features like rectangular headlights to 20 year old Moskvitch or Wartburg.
Fantastic piece. The question around the ‘humble official’ versions is fascinating. Thanks Stanislav for this glimpse at the complexities in tracing the provenance of these beasts.
Agreed! And this fascinating unique piece of history deserves to be kept intact, and appreciated for what it is.
I have never liked the looks of the Chaika. I though it looked like somebody had the front end of a car and the rear end of another car and welded them together.
I do like the GAZ-M20 Pobeda. I think it has that 1940’s Oldsmobile vibe to it and I also like the later GAZ-24
I’m almost surprised this was not found in Havana. It looks like some of the, umm, creative things that Cubans did over the years to create a working car from whatever pieces they could find.
You know, I don’t find that comparison fitting. Such conversions as this one actually served a very different purpose.
Cuba never had domestic production of cars, but USSR did, and by mid-70s, when this conversion was presumably made, if you wanted a brand new standard car that would be reasonably reliable and comfortable – you could have it. Had to wait for a year or two, but you still could. If you wanted a car that had some touches of comfort, luxury and sportiness – that would have cost you a good amount of money, but you still could have it. A larger family car that would seat six and be very durable, if a bit truck-like in fit&finish and interior trim – somewhat more problematic, but still you could. A brand new large, black, genuine luxury car – well, nope, you could not.
The problem such conversions were solving was that soon after Stalin’s death they stopped selling luxury cars to the general public. In the 40s and 50s, you could buy just about anything, including East-Germany built BMWs (EMWs) and ZIMs, and if I remember correctly – even the ZIS (at least there were a lot of them in private ownership since brand new, but I’m not sure if the owners literally purchased them from dealerships, or got some other way). But in late 1950s Khrushchev just pulled the plug.
There was still the option of buying a pre-owned foreign built car (Moscow’s South Port Market always had some of these in stock for the prospective buyers), which was cool, but not very practical because getting the spare parts was problematic at best. Vladimir Vysotsky had Marina Vlady to bring the spares for his W116 from abroad, but that was not the general case. Therefore, taking an older Soviet-produced car that was already in private hands and getting it refitted it to look more modern and luxurious was really a good idea. Very expensive – much more so than buying a regular brand new car, but still.
So, in this case its not about poor guys making a “working car from whatever pieces they could find”, oh now. It’s all about the rich and the powerful showing off just how wealthy and influential they are.
That was still not the top level of showing off. In the Caucasian republics, such as Georgia or Armenia, if you _really_ wanted to show off you wealth – you just ordered some private owned car workshop to build a completely custom car to suit you tastes and registered it as a “hand made vehicle”. You can see an example of this approach in the attached picture (this car was built for Mkrtich Pogosyan from Armenia in late 1970s or 80s).
Stanislav Alexeyev:
Thanks for the lucid insights into the Soviet economy. Very enlightening!
Very weird, the headlight vessels look like mid 50’s Packard, the hood screams early fifties Buick, the center section looks like a step down Hudson. The rear I can’t think of any thing.
I like the overall 1950’s vibe of this car .
I own a few things made in Russia and almost all of them use a 1950’s style font on the letters/numbers .
I too think this is a fascinating bit of history that should be saved .
If nothing else it will easily have a long life ahead as a movie vehicle (picture car) .
-Nate
My understanding is that there aren’t really any ‘fonts’ in Cyrillic – there’s only really the block or formalised cursive ‘fonts’ as such. Certainly in Unicode…
So GAZ and Moskvitch are today written much as they were back then.
If there IS a groovy ’70s font for Cyrillic(!) I’d love to see an example!
This car is an example of a particular period in Russian history and perhaps ought to be preserved as is.
That Pogosyan custom car 5 pics above has what sure looks rather like a stretched Volvo greenhouse on it. It may not have been built entirely from scratch.
Yup… such cars were not the work of some poor guy trying to keep his heap rolling with whatever he could scrounge, to have some car rather than none. Such a person would have simply bought a regular Moskvich and spent every weekend in the garage fixing it, as millions of regular folks did. In the last decades of the USSR, it was all about STATUS. Then as now, people crave what they cannot have. Back then, if you had any money or connections, you did your best to obtain the latest and the greatest, the stuff that the government did not think the people ought to have, anything that stood out from the drab mass-produced crap available to everybody, anything that conveyed even just a little prestige. If you could afford a ZIM, you were somebody. But once a new model, the Chayka, came out and outclassed you, updating the old ZIM was one way to hold onto that prestige for a while. It wasn’t quite a Chayka but since that wasn’t available to the public at all, the update showed that you still had pull to go even that far. For a few more years, you were fashionable and cool again. Your neghbors were still envious and you reveled in beating the system that denied you the luxury you felt you deserved.
Here’s a similar example – a 1955 Chevy updated with a 1959 front clip. It’s almost unimaginable what kind of connections one had to have to get an American car in the USSR back then, but then to be able to update it and keep it current, too… that’s like having power to make lightning strike twice. Sure, it looks like a Cuban car, but the rationale behind it couldn’t be more different.