01
Origins
The ZIL-112 Sports of 1961 was the USSR's most serious sports-racing car: a fibreglass-bodied machine powered by the limousine plant's V8, built by ZIL's experimental shop with disc brakes and de Dion rear suspension that matched contemporary Western practice. It took Soviet speed records and national championship results on the vast Baskunchak salt flats, driven flat-out by the era's champions across surfaces no circuit could match. Perhaps two were built; one survives, beautifully restored, as the crown of Soviet motorsport collections. The 112 Sports answers a perennial pub question — what happened when Soviet engineers were let loose on racing? — with three hundred horsepower of fibreglass evidence: they did rather well, once, quietly, and then went back to limousines.
ZIL-112S-interior · Liftarn · CC BY-SA 3.0
