Russian cars

It was already a concept Russian car without discounts or apologies. His ideological inspiration is Yuri Dolmatovsky, the brother of the Soviet poet Yevgeny Dolmatovsky. Not only an engineer, but also a designer, journalist and one of the most famous car promoters in the USSR, Yuri Aronovich in the late 40s thought about the advantages of the carriage layout. It was with his participation that the development of the first passenger single-volume car in the USSR began.

The NAMI-013 concept car, as they like to repeat today, is ahead of its time. Indeed! The rear-engine layout, five meters in length, three rows of seats and the driver sitting in front of the front axle is, no matter how you say it, a breakthrough. Alas, Dolmatovsky’s enthusiasm, which met with approval even on the pages of the foreign automotive press, did not find support in higher authorities. It didn’t go beyond the only prototype, and even that one was disposed of in 1954.

And seven years later, the Chevrolet Corvair Greenbrier, a rear-wheel drive, rear-engine monocomplete, ideologically very similar to Dolmatovsky’s car debuted in the United States.

Again, on a clean concept car - as a product of engineering, designed to rotate the gears of technological progress, this handsome man does not pull. Before us is "only" a racing car on the ZIS-110 chassis. But even in very specific linear races - in pair races several hundred kilometers long, which were arranged on ordinary highways, the 112th showed by no means outstanding results. But on the role of a dream-car - a car that claimed, if not the superiority of the socialist industry over the “rotting West”, then at least the parity of the parties, the car fit perfectly.

The brainchild of Valentin Rostkov is easy to blame for imitating the conceptual Buick Le Saber. But two cars appeared almost simultaneously, and both are beautiful in their own way. But in the 112th there was a truly Russian scale: almost six meters in length, a terrifying kind of cyclopean headlight in the center, snaggy "mustache" growing from the front fairing, and going into the powerful sidewalls of the front wings. It was cool! And not only in design. In the most pumped version, the in-line (!) Eight-cylinder engine of the Dream Car developed nearly 200 horsepower and, according to contemporaries, was swinging for two hundred at maximum speed.

Having failed with NAMI-013, Yuri Dolmatovsky was not disappointed in the carriage layout. And when the leadership of the Irbitsky motorcycle plant thought about releasing a car at its facilities, the management of US again began to promote the idea of ​​a compact one-volume car.

Now it was really quite compact - less than 3.5 meters long, and the curb weight was about half a ton. At the same time, the micro-van named “Squirrel” had a full-fledged five-seater interior, and its 700-cc motorcycle engine gave out only 20 horsepower. However, given the low mass, this was enough for trips around the city. Among other things, the “Squirrel” was elegant and futuristic in a good way - which is only the front part of the cabin for access to the salon, leaning forward. However, the design, well thought out with an eye on mass production, remained a concept. They changed their minds about building cars on Irbit, and the Squirrel was not given a second chance for the Russian cars.

Almost everyone knows that the first Zaporozhets, nicknamed “Humpbacked” by the people, is a clone of the Italian FIAT minicar. But not many are aware that at the beginning of his life, “Constipation”, in fact, was considered a “Muscovite”.

According to the original plan, "Brokeback" was supposed to get on the conveyor of the Moscow plant of small cars (MZMA), later known as AZLK. For this purpose, several copies of the popular FIAT 600 were purchased in Europe - they were disassembled, looked inside and, so to speak, creatively processed. Despite the changed wheel diameter and cosmetic changes in the external design, it was clear to everyone where the ears of this "domestic development" came from.

Ultimately, the borrowed design did not bring MZMA happiness. By order of the above, the finished concept project of the city Moskvich with all the technical documentation and driving prototypes was handed over to the Ukrainian Kommunar plant, the well-known parent of Zapora. And Moskvich remained the prototype.

One of the most beautiful cars ever created in the Union, the Yunost bus, can also be called the grimace of a socialist economy. Suffice it to say that this bus was created on the nodes and assemblies of the government ZIL-111 limousine. Just imagine a minibus or ambulance weighing four tons and even with a voracious gasoline V8 under the hood. Absurd!

But the appearance of “Youth” would have made honor and the best European bodywork studio of that time. The futuristic and fresh exterior of the minibus in Soviet realities seemed almost a revelation. Even the beautiful Volga GAZ-21 - the most fashionable car of the USSR at that time - next to the ZIL-118 looked down-to-earth and modest.

True, happiness is not in beauty. Despite its becoming, “Youth” was unplanned, semi-official and, therefore, not the most beloved child of ZIL. Created almost on a voluntary basis, the bus turned out to be expensive to manufacture, expensive to operate (fuel consumption exceeded 25 liters per 100 kilometers), and most importantly, its scope was too specific. He did not pull on a full-fledged city or intercity bus, but for a minibus it turned out to be too bulky and heavy. In a word, even despite the success at the “Bus Week in Nice” in 1967, where the car won the Grand Prix, the Youth remained a beautiful and largely progressive design, which in the end turned out to be unnecessary to anyone.