GAZ-61 - the "marshal" car

The first Soviet car with a body "sedan" and a drive on all wheels is GAZ-61. The history of the appearance of this car is extremely interesting and can serve as a demonstration of the designer's talent and the birth of a new concept of a vehicle designed to overcome off-road.

After the car factory was built in Nizhny Novgorod and the production of trucks and cars began, the first commercially produced passenger car was GAZ-AA with an open saloon. Its prototype was Ford V8-40. Further development of the model GAZ-AA was "emka" - GAZ-M1 - four-door closed sedan. One of its consumers was the army, in which the process of motorization began and was rampant.

Initially, the military used ordinary civilian vehicles for their needs, but gradually they had requirements that only high-cross-country vehicles could fulfill. At that time designers saw a Soviet car for off-road traffic as a three-axle truck. Its wheel formula looked like 6x4, although there were variants of semi-tracked cars.

The development of all-wheel drive cars at the GAZ was at that time the KB Gracheva VA. It was he who proposed a new concept of such a vehicle, inspired by the ideas of the Ford-Marmon-Herrington LD2. Its basis was Ford V8, i.e. Grachev could use the Soviet car "emka" (GAZ-M1) as a base. Moreover, by this time the release of a new engine began, which later received the GAZ-11 index and was an analog of the Dodge engine.

That's the way all the conditions for the birth of GAZ-61 - a closed comfortable off-road car - coincided. Intuition of the designer and the emergence of a new powerful engine, allowed to be born this car, which was fond of the generals and marshals of the Red Army. She carried her hard service on the roads of all fronts.

Without going into the technical details and design features, we must immediately note that the driving capabilities of the resulting car made a very strong impression. Some of them are unattainable at the present time. These data were obtained with numerous tests that lasted several months. At the same time tested Ford-Marmon-Herrrington LD2, and let it be a little, but GAZ-61 was superior to its opponent.

At that time, the ratio of power to mass of this car was not equal. The swamp, the arable land, the washed roads - he was able to travel everywhere. His patency was not inferior to the tank. During the tests, the car managed to climb up the stairs to the Volga slope near the Kremlin. In addition to overcoming various obstacles, the car differed at that time with excellent dynamics (107 km / h) and economy (14 l / 100 km). For that time, these were far from ordinary figures

We can say that the GAZ-61 is the first Soviet all-wheel-drive car of a new type. At the same time, it demonstrates very good performance when driving on roads and at the same time excellent cross-country ability when passing off-road. Unfortunately, the conditions of the pre-war and war years did not allow the organization of a large-scale production of this car, and this all-terrain vehicle served more as a machine for the generals and marshals of the Red Army.