CarBrandLogos archive · GAZ · 1946

GAZGAZ-M20 Pobeda

Victory in name, and one of the first slab-sided cars anywhere in the world.

Photo: Gwafton · CC BY-SA 3.0

The story

A defining chapter in GAZ history.

Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the GAZ-M20 Pobeda, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.

GAZ Pobieda in a street of Mtskheta - Georgia 1

Origins

Design work began while the war was still being fought, which makes what emerged more remarkable. The Pobeda, whose name means victory, abandoned separate wings and running boards for a smooth, slab-sided fastback shell on a unitary body, a configuration only just appearing anywhere in the world. Very few cars looked like it in June 1946, and none of them came from a country in the state the Soviet Union was in.

GAZ Pobieda in a street of Mtskheta - Georgia 1 · Brejnev · CC0

GAZ Pobieda in a street of Mtskheta - Georgia 2

Design and engineering

Under the skin it was conventional and tough: a 2.1-litre side-valve four, a three-speed gearbox, rear-wheel drive and suspension built for unmade roads. Early cars were troublesome enough that production was halted and the design reworked, but once sorted it ran until 1958 in saloon and cabriolet forms.

GAZ Pobieda in a street of Mtskheta - Georgia 2 · Brejnev · CC0

In production

Two offshoots matter. The GAZ-M72 married the Pobeda body to GAZ-69 four-wheel-drive running gear, producing a civilian all-wheel-drive saloon years before the idea became common anywhere. And in Poland the design was licensed to FSO and built as the Warszawa into the 1970s, long outliving the original. The GAZ-21 Volga replaced it at home.

Газ М72 · Andshel · CC BY-SA 3.0

At a glance