CarBrandLogos archive · GAZ · 1932

GAZGAZ-A

A Ford Model A, built by Soviet hands to prove the plan could work.

Photo: Leo Medvedev/Лев Леонидович Медведев · CC BY-SA 4.0

The story

A defining chapter in GAZ history.

Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the GAZ-A, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.

Origins

The Soviet Union's first mass-produced car was not a Soviet design. Under a 1929 technical assistance agreement, Ford supplied drawings, tooling and engineering help for a new plant at Gorky, and from 1932 the Model A came off Soviet lines as the GAZ-A, with a 3.3-litre four-cylinder engine, a three-speed gearbox and rear-wheel drive.

Gaz-4 Музейный комплекс УГМК 2021 · Nord794ub · CC BY-SA 4.0

Chernogolovka Military-Technical Museum 2019.09.12 22

Design and engineering

The point was never really the car. It was the factory and the workforce: Gorky was built to teach mass production to a country that had almost none, and the GAZ-A was the first thing it made in quantity. Most went to the state rather than to private owners, serving as staff transport, taxis and the basis of light military vehicles. Production ended in 1936 when the more modern GAZ-M1 replaced it, and survivors are rare enough that most Russians know the shape only from photographs of the period.

Chernogolovka Military-Technical Museum 2019.09.12 22 · Msgevans00 · CC BY 4.0

At a glance