Meanwhile, back in the USSR

[Chuck Dempsey]

Another pic I got from my Facebook group, labeled USSR 1938. I think I see a couple of Model A clones.....

[Hoovercw]

That Rolls sure speaks volumes about the equality of all workers in the USSR.

[Terry, NJ]

Those clones you see are GAZ "Uncle Joe" bought an entire factory from Henry Ford (And never paid him for it) produced the lookalike. There a guy on here, M2M, who speaks Russian and can tell you what the letters GAZ stand for Gorky Automobile Factory? Or something! I used to know but I forget. The two with the big artillery wheels are probably Packards. Another company that Stalin loved. He later patterned his big ZIM "Chaika" on on the later 39 48 packards up to the recently. It has been said that although Packard is dead in the US, It survives in Russia. I don't vouch for the accuracy of any of this. It's half remembered at best.
Terry

[Brad in Germany]

Well.....looking very closely at the picture, here is what I see:

- first car is a Ford Model A: note it is 1928-1929 - GAZ A looked like 1930-1931 style, also note top pointy inside of radiator shell - GAZ had commercial looking radiator shells)

- second car is a Horch (Germany): note the radiator ornament

- third car is a Ford Model A (note top pointy inside of radiator shell - GAZ A had commercial looking radiator shells)

- fourth car looks to be a Steyr (Austria): note the pointed radiator

The other cars are too blurry for me to see. There are however no GAZ cars nor Rolls-Royces nor Packards in this photo.

Brad in Maryland

[Chuck Dempsey]

Good job, Brad. Looks like my Facebook source was a bit confused.....

[JaxFLG8r]

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Chuck your friend may be right. This building in the photograph appears to be the Gosprom, known as the State Industry Building in English. It is in Kharkiv, Ukraine, and was finished in 1928. At one time, it was the tallest building in the USSR.

[Chuck Dempsey]

Jax - Perhaps the cars were just on a visit. That would account for the need to take a pic.... Thanks

[Chuck Dempsey]

And the same view of building today, via Google Street View.....

[Terry, NJ]

German Horch! Yes of course! I once knew a guy who claimed to be the son of the Bulgarian Diplomat to Russia in the late 30s and he told me that they had a Horch that they used for official occasions. Yes, it's probably a Horch! Good Call! GAZ, Gorkovosky Auto. Zavod (Gorky Automobile Factory)! My mistake about Chaikas, the first one was produced in 1959.

[Brad in Germany]

In mid 1929 the USSR agreed to buy 72,000 assembled or "knocked down" (K.D.) Ford cars, trucks, parts and equipment from Ford USA and would assemble them in one of two assembly plants: Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod. Those assembly plants started assembling Ford Model A's from US imported parts, in February 1930.

(Note that the GAZ factory in Nizhny Novgorod did not open for production until 1932.)

So the Ford Model A's in this picture are most likely some of those Ford Model A's that were imported from the USA either pre-assembled or as K.D. and then assembled in Russia.

By the way, that contract between Ford and the USSR was signed on 31 May (yesterday) 1929.

Brad in Maryland

[Chuck Dempsey]

Brad, any idea what 'body styles' these 72,000 were? A variety, I would assume....

[Robert/Texas]

This interests me. Back in 1958, when I was stationed in Pirmasens, Germany, I had a well used 1950 Mercedes 170-S. I often parked it in the parking lot next to an old Horch which had HUGE wooden wheels. It belonged to an officer who was planning to take it home to the US. I've often wondered about what happened that Horch.

[Chuck Dempsey]

Robert, any idea how old the Horch was? teens, 20s, 30s?

[Robert/Texas]

Chuck, I would guess that the Horch was around a 1928 model or perhaps a few years older. I remember that the top of the wheels/tires were enormous compared to those on my Mercedes.

[M2M]

Originally Posted by Hoovercw

That Rolls sure speaks volumes about the equality of all workers in the USSR.

It's not a Rolls, this Western limo may have been been a gift from a Western government, likely Hitler's Germany. Brezhnev, for example, was given a Rolls as a present from the British. USSR made their own state limos in the 1930s, the ZIS 101 and the later ZIS 110. This trend continues today with Putin now using a NAMI state limo.

[Brad in Germany]

Originally Posted by Chuck Dempsey

Brad, any idea what 'body styles' these 72,000 were? A variety, I would assume....

Nope, I have no clue what body styles they were.

Here are two era magazine advertisements for Ford cars, in Russian, from the Russian magazine titled "American Engineer and Industry":

October 1929:


June 1930:


Brad in Maryland

[M2M]

Originally Posted by Chuck Dempsey

Brad, any idea what 'body styles' these 72,000 were? A variety, I would assume....

[M2M]

These are the "Ford Timken" mentioned in the chart above:

https://translate.google.com/transla...-text=&act=url


And by the way, the 10 Tudors the chart shows were assembled in 1929 were put together in Kharkov (Kharkiv), coincidentally, the city where the photo at the top was taken. See:

https://translate.google.com/transla...-text=&act=url


Here's a photo of Model A Coupes at USSR assembly plant in 1932, so many body styles were made but AA and A phaetons were the most common once production started in Dec. 1932.

[M2M]

In 1927, the Soviet Union possessed no indigenous automobile industry; a decade later, it had established a complex system of plants for car and truck production. A the center of this system was GAZ that owed its existence to the technical assistance agreement with Ford Motor Company. On the basis of this agreement, Soviet engineers copied the entirety of Ford’s production processes on location at River Rouge and recreated them in central Russia.
Only a couple of decades later, the US military were meeting GAZ trucks and jeeps on the battlefield in Korea and Vietnam, see:

https://www.drive2.com/b/1364265/

[M2M]

[Terry, NJ]

M2M, once again, Thank you for posting this. Very interesting! We get so little on Soviet era vehicles! For better or worse, they certainly had them. I always consider the direction of the engineering and design of the two competing systems. Thanks again!
Terry

[M2M]

It's a pity there's little info in English about these Russian Fords. They made some interesting variants and production continued until the 1950s. Do the suppliers sell ANY books that mention these cars?


Anyway, if anyone wants a book or scale model of a GAZ A/AA/AAA for their collection let me know and I'll try to find one when I'm next in Russia. Although, I think you'll find them on eBay. I'm going to try to track down a GAZ 67b 4x4 driveline with a banjo front axle.







The Holy Grail of barn finds, the GAZ-AAAA

[Marshall V. Daut]

The front license plate in posting #22 reads "проба гн", which means "test", "experiment", the same as what "Probe" means in German. Perhaps this was a Russian prototype truck or a test vehicle. I don't know what the "гн" stands for. It's equivalent to our "GN". Possibly it refers to a location or assembly plant?
Marshall

[Marshall V. Daut]

By the way, the name on the bottom model kit box means "Soviet Army Tri-axle Truck"
M.

[M2M]

These scale model kits are worth buying for the artwork on the box.

First one seems to show a GAZ AA (or maybe MM) in WW2 stripped form of no front brakes, one headlight, wooden doors, canvas top in a convoy on the Road of Life during the Leningrad siege. See:

https://www.fordbarn.com/forum/showthread.php?t=235201







Second kit shows a GAZ-AAA with a famous WW2 propaganda poster on a buildling in the background.

[Brad in Germany]

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Ref post #22, maybe it was a prototype for the GAZ-60:

[M2M]

I think our American friends might be missing some images of the Stars and Stripes so here's a WW2 Russian propaganda poster just for for you. Flags are arranged in the seating order of this photo:

[Marshall V. Daut]

The words beneath the black wolf on the poster read: "So will it be with the fascist beast!"
Marshall

[Terry, NJ]

Good Catch, Marshall! ProBa =Test Tell me, How're you getting the Cyrillic alphabet on an American keyboard?
Terry

Originally Posted by Marshall V. Daut

The front license plate in posting #22 reads "проbа гн", which means "test", "experiment", the same as what "Probe" means in German. Perhaps this was a Russian prototype truck or a test vehicle. I don't know what the "гн" stands for. It's equivalent to our "GN". Possibly it refers to a location or assembly plant?
Marshall

[Terry, NJ]

M2M, Can you explain to me the exact meaning of the word "RODINA" and the phrase "RODINA Mother"?
Thanks, Terry

Originally Posted by M2M

These scale model kits are worth buying for the artwork on the box.

First one seems to show a GAZ AA (or maybe MM) in WW2 stripped form of no front brakes, one headlight, wooden doors, canvas top in a convoy on the Road of Life during the Leningrad siege. See:

https://www.fordbarn.com/forum/showthread.php?t=235201







Second kit shows a GAZ-AAA with a famous WW2 propaganda poster on a buildling in the background.

[Marshall V. Daut]

Terry -
Over the past couple long, cold winters here, at night I picked up studying Russian again from my college major days 47 years ago (also German). This website allows you to pick the Cyrillic alphabet letters and place them in a window to get the word's translation and examples of its usage in sentences. My text books are almost 50 years old, so this up-to-date website helps bring me into the 21st Century in terms of a living, ever-changing language. Although like any on-line tool it is not foolproof and doesn't always help, it's still a pretty good resource if you have a basic working knowledge of the Russian language and its alphabet. Try it out for grins and giggles: https://www.lexilogos.com/english/ru...ranslation.htm.
Once you have transferred letters into the window, you can copy and paste them, as I have done above. Note that I grabbed the wrong letter for "b". It should have read "проба", not "проьа". The program didn't goof - I DID!
Marshall

[Marshall V. Daut]

"M2M, Can you explain to me the exact meaning of the word "RODINA" and the phrase "RODINA Mother"?"

родина = Homeland, basically "Mother(land) Russia"

Marshall

[updraught]

Bought this, together with a AAA and a couple of GAZ 67b kits from the basement of a small hardware store in Berkley USA about 10 years ago.

It was memorable as I took them to a nearby courier to send home and they wanted US$160 to do that.

There is a real 67b here somewhere that was captured in Korea. Saw it at a swap meet.

[M2M]

Originally Posted by updraught

Bought this, together with a AAA and a couple of GAZ 67b kits from the basement of a small hardware store in Berkley USA about 10 years ago.

It was memorable as I took them to a nearby courier to send home and they wanted US$160 to do that.

There is a real 67b here somewhere that was captured in Korea. Saw it at a swap meet.

Nice D-8 armored car kit. For info on these vehicles, see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-8_Armored_Car


I know the GAZ-67b captured from the North Koreans you mentioned, and it's owner in Melbourne (unless he has sold it). See:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7E2GioDZBo

He was wanting to sell but was asking way too much IMHO, despite the car's amazing history.

[updraught]

https://ru-clip.com/video/jspQ5QPRQT...f-victory.html

GAZ 67 video

[Terry, NJ]

No you didn't goof! I did! I accidentally made the original disappear and I couldn't make it right, so I did the next best thing, I slipped in a english "B". I don't own a Russian text book, never had a Russian lesson in my life. I lived with a "Colony" of White Russians (Cassville, NJ) and I worked with them as a Machinist. Also, There was a Russian Language newspaper Novoye Russkoye Slovo, which was kind of ubiquitous around the shop. When I was in the "House" I taught myself the alphabet. Having some German ancestors, Ich Hat der Deutsch sprache Gelernte (Kleinish Bitte) I was a HS dropout. I wonder what I could have done with a formal education. Und So, "Rodina" means homeland like "Heimat" in German.
Terry

Originally Posted by Marshall V. Daut

Terry -
Over the past couple long, cold winters here, at night I picked up studying Russian again from my college major days 47 years ago (also German). This website allows you to pick the Cyrillic alphabet letters and place them in a window to get the word's translation and examples of its usage in sentences. My text books are almost 50 years old, so this up-to-date website helps bring me into the 21st Century in terms of a living, ever-changing language. Although like any on-line tool it is not foolproof and doesn't always help, it's still a pretty good resource if you have a basic working knowledge of the Russian language and its alphabet. Try it out for grins and giggles: https://www.lexilogos.com/english/ru...ranslation.htm.
Once you have transferred letters into the window, you can copy and paste them, as I have done above. Note that I grabbed the wrong letter for "b". It should have read "проба", not "проьа". The program didn't goof - I DID!
Marshall

[Marshall V. Daut]

"Novoye Russkoye Slovo" = "(The) New Russian Word"

M.

[M2M]

The GAZ-AAA scale model kit is only $13 plus shipping, see:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Zvezda-3547.../153037740210?

These "Zvezda" brand kits are made in Russia under license from GAZ !!!

[updraught]

Looks like I can buy 3 of those kits (Lithuania) and ship them here for US$16.

That's 1/10th of the price of shipping from the USA 10 years ago.

Do they build ships in Lithuania?

[M2M]

Originally Posted by updraught

Do they build ships in Lithuania?

Yes I think, see:

http://www.wsy.lt/en/

[M2M]

Originally Posted by updraught

Do they build ships in Lithuania?

Speaking of ships. That Lithuanian seller also has ancient Greek trireme warship kits for sale, see:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Zvezda-8514.../152589679579?

These triremes were used to devastating effect in the Battle of Salamis (480 BC), a major turning point of human history.

[M2M]

There are some interesting Soviet machines in this link:

https://www.rferl.org/a/the-stranges.../29156817.html