GAZ (Gorky Automobile Plant) is an automobile plant in the Avtozavodsky District of Nizhny Novgorod, the flagship site of the GAZ Group holding and the largest industrial enterprise in the city. It was built in 1930–1931 under a technical assistance agreement with the American company Ford Motor Company; it went into operation on January 1, 1932, and on January 29, 1932, the first vehicle rolled off the assembly line — the GAZ-AA truck.[1] The plant gave its name to an entire city district, and Nizhny Novgorod residents simply call the adjoining neighborhoods Avtozavod. Today GAZ produces light and medium-duty commercial vehicles of the GAZelle, Sobol, Gazon, and Valdai families and remains the best-selling brand in its class in Russia.[2]

Construction, 1929–1932

The Supreme Council of the National Economy of the USSR (VSNKh) decided to build an automobile plant on March 4, 1929; on April 6 of the same year the construction area was approved — the outskirts of Nizhny Novgorod — and on May 1 the VSNKh and Ford Motor Company concluded an agreement on technical assistance in establishing mass production of Ford-A passenger cars and Ford-AA trucks. Technological and construction design was carried out in the USA, mostly by Soviet engineers, while the architectural and construction design was developed by the Austin company.[1]

The first stone of the future plant's foundation was laid on May 2, 1930, near Nizhny Novgorod. Construction was completed in eighteen months: on January 1, 1932, the automobile plant entered service, on January 29 the first GAZ-AA truck rolled off the assembly line, and from December 1932 assembly began of the GAZ-A mid-size passenger car.[1]

The first GAZ-A and GAZ-AA vehicles were assembled from Ford's drawings, but already with differences from the American prototypes: the clutch housing and steering mechanism were reinforced for Russian conditions. In 1933 Andrey Lipgart became the plant's chief designer, and under him many original modifications were created on the basis of the "polutorka" (the one-and-a-half-ton truck).[3]

The War

The plant was first bombed on November 4, 1941, during the defense of Moscow: aircraft flew low in broad daylight over the streets of Sotsgorod and the plant's checkpoints, and the casualties were mostly local residents and refugees from Moscow. In February 1942 another raid followed, the destruction from which was slight.[4]

The main blow came in June 1943: preparing for the offensive at Kursk, the German command decided to knock out the industrial centers of the Volga Region. On the night of June 5, twenty bombers out of the forty-five that had taken off broke through to the city and dropped 289 high-explosive bombs, 260 of them on the automobile plant; the main assembly line, the spring shop, and the forge were put out of action. The second raid, on the night of June 6, involved eighty aircraft; the third, and the heaviest, on the night of June 7, involved one hundred fifty-seven. Twelve shops, warehouses, and a depot were destroyed, and in the district residential buildings, the automatic telephone exchange, a polyclinic, the district executive committee, the Central Club, and an electrical substation were damaged.[4]

The bombing continued until June 22, 1943. In all, over seven raids German aviation flew 645 sorties and dropped 1,631 high-explosive and more than 3,390 incendiary bombs on the city, of which 1,095 and 2,493 respectively fell on the automobile plant. 282 people were killed and more than five hundred wounded. At the plant, 52 buildings were destroyed and nine thousand pieces of equipment put out of action; specialists believed that restoration would take years.[4]

Restoration began without waiting for the raids to end. On June 11, fifteen youth brigades went out onto the site; by early July fifteen hundred young specialists were working at the plant, a month later thirty-five hundred; in all, thirty-five thousand people took part in the restoration. The plant was returned to service in one hundred days — on October 28, 1943.[4] For eliminating the consequences of the raids and for uninterrupted output, the enterprise was awarded the Order of the Red Banner on March 9, 1944, and in September 1945, for producing self-propelled artillery mounts, the Order of the Patriotic War, 1st Class.[4]

Postwar Models, 1945–1970

Preparation of a new model lineup began even before the end of the war. Mass production of the GAZ-51 truck began in January 1946, and the vehicle stayed on the assembly line for twenty-nine years. In June 1946 the first batch of the GAZ-M-20 Pobeda passenger car was assembled, and in 1948 the plant received a government assignment to develop a six-seat limousine — thus the GAZ-12 ZIM appeared.[5]

In late 1956 the Volga went onto the assembly line, and in 1959 the seven-seat Chaika GAZ-13. At the 1958 World's Fair in Brussels, the Volga GAZ-21, the Chaika GAZ-13, and the GAZ-52 truck were awarded the Grand Prix. In March 1958 Ivan Kiselyov was appointed director of the plant; he headed GAZ for twenty-five years, and under him the enterprise grew into a large production association with specialized plants.[5]

In 1970 the Volga GAZ-24 entered mass production, while the GAZ-66 off-road vehicle, created under the leadership of Aleksandr Prosvirnin, remained on the assembly line for more than a quarter of a century.[5]

Besides automobiles, the plant produced consumer goods: in 1954 the one-millionth bicycle bearing the Gorky Automobile Plant brand rolled off the line.[6] Later, bicycle production was split off into the independent Velozavod.

Consolidation and Reconstruction, 1971–1991

In 1971, the plant was awarded the Order of Lenin for mastering the production of new trucks and passenger cars. On August 24, 1971, the enterprise was reorganized into the AvtoGAZ production association, and on October 31, 1973, into the GAZ production association, which comprised eleven plants.[7][8]

The reconstruction of the 1980s was the largest in the enterprise's entire history. In 1980, the association's workforce received the international Golden Mercury award; in March 1981, the ten-millionth vehicle rolled off the assembly line, and in December 1995, the fifteen-millionth.[8]

Thousands of plant workers were awarded orders and medals, fifteen were granted the title of Hero of Socialist Labor, and more than eighty workers, technicians, engineers, and production managers received the Lenin and USSR State Prizes.[9]

Joint-Stock Company and the GAZelle, 1992–2004

In November 1992, the Gorky Automobile Plant was transformed into an open joint-stock company, and Nikolay Pugin was elected president; the enterprise was registered under the name OAO GAZ on January 13, 1993.[9][7] In those years the plant employed more than 110,000 people, and the company had nine subsidiaries and five plants of its own — for automobile engines, truck axles, dies and molds, gearboxes, and woodworking.[9]

The reduction in defense orders forced designers to look for new niches: using components from armored personnel carriers and trucks, they created the GAZ-5903V all-terrain vehicle with a pulse fire-extinguishing system, the GAZ-3403 snow-and-swamp vehicle, and the GAZ-3934 "Siam" armored cash-in-transit vehicle.[9]

The main vehicle of the new era was the GAZelle. The first GAZ-3302 rolled off the assembly line on July 20, 1994, and the model was officially presented in August of the same year at a Moscow auto show; one of the prototypes covered 270,000 kilometers in testing. The family survived the 2003 facelift and then went through several generations: the GAZelle Business (2010), the GAZelle NEXT (2013), the GAZelle City (2020), and the GAZelle NN (2021).[10]

"GAZ Group"

"GAZ Group" was created in 2005 during the restructuring of the production assets of Ruspromavto, which had existed since 2001. The holding company included the Gorky Automobile Plant itself and eighteen automobile manufacturing enterprises in ten regions of Russia — the Pavlovo and Likino bus plants, the Yaroslavl Avtodizel, the Ural Automobile Plant, and others; the headquarters remained in Nizhny Novgorod, and the machine-building holding company Russian Machines became the main shareholder. In the 2020s the European Union added PAO GAZ to its sanctions list, stating in its justification that the company is part of the Russian military-industrial complex, which extended the restrictive measures to the activities of the entire group.[11][12]

In the early 2000s, GAZ itself employed more than seventy thousand people, and the plant's share of the city's machine-building industry was 75.3 percent, and of the Region's, 48.4 percent.[12]

The president of the GAZ Group is Vadim Sorokin. On August 12, 2026, on the eve of the city's 805th anniversary, he was awarded the title of Honorary Citizen of Nizhny Novgorod; accepting the award, he credited it to the merit of the automobile plant's workforce of many thousands.[13]

What is produced now

The plant's core program consists of light commercial vehicles of the GAZelle and Sobol families and the medium-duty trucks Gazon and Valdai.[14] According to the results for January–April 2026, GAZ remains the best-selling light commercial vehicle brand in Russia, and the GAZelle NEXT the best-selling model on the market: 5,132 vehicles and 24.4 percent of sales.[2]

The plant also builds, in a small series, the GAZelle e-NN electric van with a gross weight of 4.6 tons: a synchronous electric motor with a power of 100 kilowatts, a 48-kilowatt-hour battery, and a range of 120 kilometers, which can be extended to 200 kilometers with additional batteries.[15]

For 2026 the plant announced not new models but an expansion of the existing families: methane versions of the medium-duty Gazon Next and Valdai 12 are being prepared, with a 5.1-liter, 170-horsepower YaMZ-535 CNG gas engine, as well as an ambulance based on the all-wheel-drive GAZelle NN.[14] Separately, preparations are under way for the release of the GAZelle NN 4x4 with a gross weight of five tons — thanks to its greater load capacity, more body variants can be fitted on its base.[2]

In May 2026, at the Comvex exhibition in Moscow, the GAZ Group showed a prospective modular platform for a new generation of commercial vehicles. It is designed for any type of powertrain — gasoline and diesel engines, gas, electric, and hybrid — allows front-, rear-, or all-wheel drive, and the fuel tank, gas cylinders, or traction batteries are placed under the floor; the stated loading height is 60 centimeters, and the ground clearance is 18 centimeters.[16]

Market position

Demand for commercial transport in the 2020s proved unstable. In the first half of 2025, the market for medium-duty trucks shrank by almost 40 percent, light commercial vehicles by 30, and buses by 60; in August 2025, the Gorky Automobile Plant temporarily switched production to a four-day work week, explaining this by the high key interest rate and the unavailability of financial instruments for purchasing vehicles. The company promised to preserve jobs and social guarantees, and to set the work schedule month by month from September.[17]

The decline continued in 2026 as well: sales of light commercial vehicles in Russia for January–April fell by 22.5 percent, to 21 thousand units, and by 10.8 percent for GAZ itself, to 11 thousand. At the plant, what is happening was described as a systemic demand crisis rather than a temporary correction, and the prohibitive cost of leasing is considered the main cause. The audit and consulting company Tekhnologii Doveriya, meanwhile, expects the market to recover in 2026 — growth of 2.3 percent, to 90 thousand vehicles.[2]

Passenger car production and the new Volga

The plant stopped producing its own passenger cars in 2009, when the last Volga GAZ-31105 sedan came off the assembly line; after that, the site was used for contract assembly of Volkswagen and Skoda vehicles, which ended in 2022.[18]

Passenger car production at the Nizhny Novgorod site has been revived under the Volga brand, but it belongs to a different company — the joint-stock company "Passenger Car Production," to which the rights to the brand were transferred. Serial production of three models — class C and D crossovers and a class D sedan — began in the second quarter of 2026, sales have been announced for the third quarter, and the site's design capacity is 110,000 cars per year.[19] For more on the history of the marque, see the article Volga (car); for the plant site and the district, see the article Avtozavodsky District.

Names of the plant

In less than a century, the enterprise has had seven official names:[7]

  • from 1932 — Gorky (until October 7, 1932, Nizhny Novgorod) State Automobile Plant named after V. M. Molotov;
  • from 1946 — Gorky Automobile Plant named after V. M. Molotov;
  • from December 13, 1957 — Gorky Automobile Plant;
  • from August 24, 1971 — AvtoGAZ production association;
  • from October 31, 1973 — GAZ production association;
  • from January 13, 1993 — GAZ OJSC;
  • from 2005 — GAZ Group.

GAZ History Museum

The first permanent exhibition of the plant's museum opened in 1965; it now occupies five thousand square meters at 95 Lenin Avenue and holds more than 43,000 items. The automobile collection includes the first "polutorkas" and "Emkas," Pobedas and Volgas, executive-class Chaikas and ZIMs, trucks and special-purpose vehicles, prototypes and experimental models; all the vehicles on display are in running order. In 2023, the museum received more than 157,000 visitors.[20]

Recollections: how people got a Volga, 1980s

People's Artist of Russia Mikhail Boyarsky told how, in the 1980s, he traveled to Gorky for a Volga that had been allotted to his uncle:[21]

Good fortune shouldn't go to waste, so instead of his uncle, the nephew set off for the Gorky Automobile Plant.

An experienced car owner, Alexander Kolker (a well-known composer and Volga owner), advised me to bring along a few sticks of scarce sausage, my records, and posters.

And he was right: in Gorky we ended up in a completely insane drinking binge with the director, his deputies, foremen, and workers. The Soviet auto giant itself made the impression of a mine on me. Everything was done with sledgehammers. What assembly line? Three or four cars dragged along in rattling chains, and by the time they came down to the ground, they had already been looted. But in the coveted spot stood two cars for "our own" people. One of them was picked out for me.

After that came a banquet. We drank hard, and the next morning they stuffed me into the car, saying it was the best of what they had.

Prying my eyes open, I asked out of curiosity: "So how do I get to Leningrad from here?!" They waved a hand: "Just drive that way!"

The story of the dummy factory in Mordvintsevo

In the Avtozavodsky District and the surrounding villages, a legend persists of a plywood mock-up of the plant, built during the war to throw bombers off course. A secondhand account, recorded by a participant of a city forum:[22]

— In the village of Mordvintsevo, where the fields are next to Fedyakovo (where Mega is), during the war of 1941–1945 they built a huge dummy of GAZ out in the fields. Made of plywood and glass, supposedly to confuse the Germans when they tried to bomb GAZ, which worked for defense. Bombs fell on the village and nearby, and in those days our grandmothers, young then, hid in cellars with their children. All of this is hearsay.

Griljash, City Forum of NN.RU, 01/28/2012 at 01:42:41.

See also

Sources

  1. lib-avt.ru — History of the Gorky Automobile Plant (archive)
  2. Kommersant (Volga Region) — Leaving Light (archive)
  3. lib-avt.ru — The Plant's First Automobiles (1930s) (archive)
  4. lib-avt.ru — The Auto Plant in the War Years (archive)
  5. lib-avt.ru — New Frontiers (1945–1970) (archive)
  6. Newsreel "News of the Day / Chronicle of Our Days" — Issue No. 19, 1954: the bicycle assembly shop of the Gorky Automobile
  7. lib-avt.ru — Gorky Automobile Plant (archive)
  8. lib-avt.ru — Reconstruction (1970s, 1980s) (archive)
  9. lib-avt.ru — GAZ at the End of the 20th Century (archive)
  10. autopilot.ru (archive)
  11. Business News. Time to Earn — In the 2020s, the European Union added PJSC GAZ to its sanctions list, stating in its justification that the company is part of the Russian military-industrial complex. Vk
  12. lib-avt.ru — GAZ at the Beginning of the 21st Century. "GAZ GROUP" (archive)
  13. Open Nizhny — President of GAZ Group Becomes Honorary Citizen of Nizhny Novgorod (archive)
  14. zr.ru — These GAZ New Models Will Appear in 2026: Details (archive)
  15. reis.zr.ru — The Electric GAZelle. An Electric Vehicle for Commercial Use (archive)
  16. iz.ru — GAZ Group Presents Prospective Modular LCV Platform
  17. Kommersant (Volga Region) — Gorky Auto Plant to Switch to a Four-Day Work Week (archive)
  18. Nizhegorodskaya Pravda — The Reborn Volga: Everything Known About the New Nizhny Novgorod Cars Collected (archive)
  19. autopilot.ru (archive)
  20. corporate-museum.ru — GAZ History Museum — CORPORATE MUSEUM (archive)
  21. gm-servis.ru — GM-Servis: Chevrolet and Opel Parts. Low prices on parts for the Chevrolet Cruze, auto parts for the Chevrolet Aveo, Lacetti, Captiva, Spark, Epica, Rezzo.
  22. — NN.RU — Post by user Griljash about the plywood mockup of the plant in Mordvintsevo, January 28, 2012
  23. pro-nn.org — Nizhny Novgorod. GAZ. Auxiliary Workshops (archive)