The GAZ-61 was the first Soviet mass-produced all-wheel-drive passenger car, built by the Gorky Automobile Plant using components of the "Emka". The GAZ-61-73 version, with a closed sedan body, became the world's first all-wheel-drive passenger car of this type.[1][2] From 1940 to 1945, 194 sedans and six phaetons were built — almost all of them went to the front, placed at the disposal of the senior command staff.[2]

Concept

The idea belonged to the Gorky engineer Vitaly Andreyevich Grachev (1903–1978). In 1938 he proposed to People's Commissar of Defense K. Ye. Voroshilov that an all-wheel-drive car be built on the basis of the GAZ-M1; in July he received the assignment, and work began at the plant in September.[1][2]

The prototype GAZ-61-40 — an open phaeton fitted with an American Dodge D-5 engine — went into factory testing on 10 July 1939. A resolution of the Defense Committee dated 19 December 1939 ordered series production to begin on 1 October 1940, but the plant's resources were diverted to aircraft engines, and series production began only on 9 July 1941 — by then in a closed body, as the GAZ-61-73.[2]

At the front

Practically all cars of the family served as staff cars for the senior command of the Red Army: Marshals G. K. Zhukov, K. K. Rokossovsky, and I. S. Konev all rode in GAZ-61s. Zhukov's personal driver, Nikolai Buchin, recalled the car's off-road capability succinctly: "The tractors got stuck — we kept going."[2]

Significance

The GAZ-61 remained a low-volume model, but it was on this car that the Gorky school worked out all-wheel drive for a passenger vehicle. That experience proved directly useful in creating the military GAZ-64 — Grachev took it on already equipped with this experience, which is what made it possible to meet the record-breaking deadline.[3]

Sources

  1. autohs.ru — GAZ-61: the first Soviet all-wheel-drive passenger car (archived)
  2. carsweek.ru — The GAZ-61 — the first mass-produced all-wheel-drive car with passenger-car comfort in Soviet history (archived)
  3. 5koleso.ru — 5 Koleso — Neither here nor there: who the first Soviet crossover, the GAZ-61, was made for (archived)