The GAZ-M20 "Pobeda" () is a passenger car produced in the Soviet Union by GAZ from 1946 until 1958. It was also licensed to the Polish Passenger Automobile Factory and produced there as the FSO Warszawa. Although usually known as the GAZ-M20, an original car's designation at that time was just M-20: M for "Molotovets" (the GAZ factory was named after Vyacheslav Molotov).

History

The first sketches of similar-looking cars were completed by Valentin Brodsky in 1938 and by Vladimir Aryamov in 1940, which revealed a growing tendency towards streamlined car design in the Soviet Union. Aryamov's two-door coupe GAZ-11-80, designed in 1940, greatly resembled the later Pobeda and was in many ways identical to it. However, after the German invasion of 1941 military priorities delayed the work on the new car and the factory was switched to military production. The first Pobeda was developed in the Soviet Union under chief engineer Andrei A. Liphart. Originally intended to be called "Rodina" (Homeland), the name "Pobeda" (Victory) was a back-up, but was preferred by Joseph Stalin. "How much does the homeland cost?" - he asked. The name was also chosen because the works started in 1943 at Gorky Avto Zavod (GAZ, "Gorky Car Plant"), when victory in World War II began to seem likely, and the car was to be a model for post-war times. The plant was later heavily bombarded, but work was unaffected. Styling was done by "the imaginative and talented Veniamin Samoilov".

The GAZ-M20 Pobeda was one of the first Soviet cars of original design and moreover at the front line of a new vogue in automobile design; only the front suspension and, partly, the unitized body were influenced by the 1938 Opel Kapitän and the 1941 Chevrolet Fleetline (the choice of car may have been influenced by the acquisition of the tooling from Opel's Rüsselsheim factory as part of the war reparations package for the Soviet side, which also led to the creation of the Moskvitch 400/420).

After a reorganisation, solving the initial build quality issues, making 346 improvements and adding two thousand new tools, the Pobeda was returned to production. It had a new carburetor, different final drive ratio (5.125:1 rather than 4.7:1), strengthened rear springs, improved heater, and the ability to run on the low-grade 66 octane fuel typical in the Soviet Union. (Among the changes was a lower rear seat, enabling military and police officers to ride without removing their caps). The improvements enabled the new Pobeda to reach in 12 seconds, half the previous model's time. In January 1949, the state commission issued a report after testing the new model and its parts, where it noted the significant improvement of build quality, ruggedness and durability of the car, good fuel consumption and on-road performance, especially on poor roads.

Total production of the Pobeda was 235,999, including 37,492 taxis and 14,222 cabriolets. A great number of cars was used by government organizations and government-owned corporations, including taxicab parks (there were no private taxis in the USSR). Despite its 16,000 ruble price tag, with average wage 800 ruble, the Pobeda was available to buy for ordinary citizens, and by 1954–1955 the demand for cars in the USSR started to exceed production, and there appeared long queues to buy a car. The Pobeda provided the first serious opportunity for the Soviet automobile industry to export cars, and "Western drivers found it to be almost indestructible".

The Pobeda was replaced by the GAZ M21 Volga.

Export

The car was a successful export for the USSR, and the design was licensed to the Polish FSO (Passenger Automobile Factory) factory in Warsaw, where it was built as the FSO Warszawa beginning in 1951, continuing until 1973. A few were reported to have been assembled in Pyongyang, North Korea, although this appears to have been a hoax. One example was shown in China as the Yuejin CN-750 but this never entered production and was most likely a Russian-made car. It was the most popular car for taxis in the 1950s, and as late as 1963 there were still 5,644 Pobedas registered in the country. The name of Finnish rock band Popeda is an intentional misspelling of "Pobeda", chosen in ironic contrast to another band called .

Technical details

Weighing , the Pobeda has a 2.1-litre sidevalve straight-four engine, derived from Chrysler's flathead six-cylinder design. It produced and achieved a top speed of .

<gallery widths="200" heights="140">

File:Pobeda-Mockup-1943-44.jpg|Clay model, 1943–1944

File:GAZ-M-20_Pobeda_Komsomolskaya_Rd_Minsk_10_September_2014.JPG|GAZ M20 (1948–1955)

File:GAZ Pobieda in a street of Mtskheta - Georgia 1.jpg|GAZ-M20V (1955–1958)

File:GAZ Pobieda in a street of Mtskheta - Georgia 2.jpg|GAZ-M20V (rear view)

File:Газ М72.JPG|GAZ-M72 (1955–1958)

File:Газ-м-20а-победа.JPG|GAZ-M20A taxi cab

</gallery>

References

Other sources

  • Main Russian Pobeda site by Artem Alekseyenko
  • Pobeda by Jelle Jan Gerrits.
  • Estonian Pobeda Club Forum
  • Pobeda the SUV-version