The GAZ-62 was an experimental light all-wheel-drive truck built by the Gorky Automobile Plant. Work on the vehicle under this designation proceeded, with interruptions, for two decades: the first prototype was built as early as 1940, and a cab-over-engine version followed in 1959. A small series of around seventy vehicles was produced; it was not the GAZ-62 but the GAZ-66 that went into full production. [1]
Two vehicles under one designation
The designation GAZ-62 was, in effect, carried by two different vehicles over the plant's history. The first prototype was built in 1940 — a light all-wheel-drive truck whose development was interrupted by the war. Work resumed in the early 1950s, and in 1959 a cab-over-engine version appeared, by then bearing little external resemblance to the pre-war prototype. [1] The conventional-cab GAZ-62 of the 1950s went through three series of prototypes — the first built in October 1952 — and underwent factory, interdepartmental, and accelerated road trials before designers abandoned the conventional-cab layout. [2]
In every case the brief was the same: a light off-road vehicle with a payload of about one tonne, able to go where an ordinary truck would get stuck. The army needed such a vehicle to move a squad with its weapons across rough terrain. [1] In the thematic plan of the USSR Ministry of War, the "one-tonne 4x4 high-mobility truck" was listed as "Theme No. 1." [2]
Small series and closure of the program
The cab-over-engine GAZ-62 reached a small production series — around seventy vehicles. It never reached full-scale production: in parallel, the plant was developing the GAZ-66, which proved superior overall, and it was this vehicle that became the plant's principal light army off-roader for decades to come. [1]
The GAZ-62 remained in the plant's history as an example of long design work that never reached the assembly line but was not wasted: the layout and all-wheel-drive solutions it developed carried over into vehicles that did reach production. [1]
Sources
- modeli-gaz.ru — GAZ-62 (archive)
- drom.ru — GAZ-62: unique and unknown. Where did it come from and who invented it? (archive)