The story of GAZ A/AA

[M2M]

On May 31, 1929, after complicated negotiations and despite the absence of official relations between the USA and the USSR (and thus without full legal protection for American entrepreneurs), the largest Soviet contract with an American firm was signed by Henry Ford, Ford Motor Company Vice-President Peter E. Martin, Saul G. Bron for Amtorg, and Valery I. Mezhlauk on behalf of VSNKh for assistance in building near Nizhny Novgorod a colossal automobile plant with projected annual capacity of 70,000 trucks and 30,000 cars. The agreement was to run for nine years, including technical cooperation between the Ford Motor Company and Avtostroi for five years after the completion of the plant, which was expected to go into operation within four years. It involved the purchase of $30,000,000 worth of Ford cars and parts with in four years and specified VSNKh’s desire “to erect in the U.S.S.R. an automobile plant or plants for the manufacture of passenger automobiles similar to the Ford Model ‘A’ and commercial trucks similar to the Ford Model ‘AA’ with all improvements which may be embodied therein by the Ford Company during the term of this agreement.”

After signing contract for technical assistance in building the Nizhnii Novgorod (Gorky) Automobile Plant: left to right, Valery I. Mezhlauk, Vice Chairman of the Supreme Council of the National Economy of the USSR; Henry Ford; Saul G. Bron, President of Amtorg. Dearborn, Mich., 31 May 1929. Photo courtesy of the Bron family.

The contract also granted VSNKh the right to use all present and future Ford patents and inventions for materials, component parts, and methods of production for these models. It also granted VSNKh the full rights to make, sell, and use Ford units throughout the USSR and to make and use all River Rouge plant tools and machinery. Further, Ford agreed to permit access to his plants in Detroit and Dearborn to up to fifty Soviet engineers, foreman and other employees of VSNKh per year, “for the purpose of learning the meth-ods and practice of manufacture and assembly in the Company’s plants,” and to send his own “experienced and competent technical personnel” to Russia to help install the equipment and train the working force.


In the beginning Ford “A” cars and “AA” trucks were assembled, using knock-down kits shipped from Detroit, at two smaller prototype plants:

• Assembly Plant No. 1, a conversion of the old Gudok Oktyabrya (“Whistle of October”) factory in Kanavino near Nizhny Novgorod; and
• Assembly Plant No. 2 the new KIM (Communist International of Youth) plant in Moscow.

Both plants would be designed by Albert Kahn who also designed the Highland Park Ford Plant, Packard Automotive Plant, Edsel and Eleanor Ford House, and many others. In mid-August 1929 Kahn's firm mailed detailed drawings of the KIM plant from Detroit to Russia so that construction could start before the cold weather. As was done for the tractor plant in Stalingrad, the structural steel elements were prefabricated in the U.S. by McClintic-Marshall Company and disassembled down to nuts and bolts for shipment to Moscow.


On February 1, 1930, the first Soviet Ford “AA” truck, known in Russian as a "polutorka" ( "1.5-tonner"), rolled off the conveyor belt of the Assembly Plant No. 1 (Gudok Oktyabrya) in Kanavino near near Nizhny Novgorod.




















Six months later on November 6, 1930 (the 13th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution), Assembly Plant No. 2 (KIM) in Moscow also began delivering the AA polutorka from USA made knock-down kits. Just like the other assembly plant, these first Soviet Fords were the 1928 model with 3 speed transmission, and for some, an under-drive auxiliary transmission was fitted.


Soon both assembly plants started receiving 1930 model year AA kits which featured a full metal cabin, 4 speed transmission, and one piece bumper.











While all this was going, the Herculean task of building a “River Rouge on the Oka" was already underway.


To be continued...

[TerryH]

Very interesting!! Thanks for posting this....looking forward to seeing the rest...

[Synchro909]

It is well known that Henry Ford was a Nazi sypmpathiser. With plants in Germany, Russia and other places set ip before the war, he didn't really care who won. It's called insurance. All very interesting, none the less. Thanks for posting.

[johnbuckley]

Thank you so much for sharing the Russian GAZ/AA posting - a fascinating piece of history .

[updraught]

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-...h-soviet-union

[henry's 31]

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Great stuff, thanks for sharing!

[Brad in Germany]

Most of this text was copied from the Journal of the Society For Industrial Archeology, Volume 37, No 1 and 2, 2011 from the article titled "The Soviet Problem with Two “Unknowns”: How an American Architect and a Soviet Negotiator Jump-Started the Industrialization of Russia, Part II: Saul Bron" by Sonia Melnikova-Raich. (page 10 forward)

You can read the complete article (with photos) at this link: http://www.academia.edu/19601168/The...tion_of_Russia.
Scroll about halfway down the link to find the "....PART II: by Saul Born", see page 10.

It is very interesting reading "on the relationship forged in the late 1920s and early 1930s between American industrialists and the Soviet government, which sought the help of Americans to move the Soviet Union from a peasant society to an industrial one."

Happy reading,
Brad in Germany