GAZ-A (1932)
Produced 1932-1936: 41,917 manufactured
The GAZ-A is a passenger car mass-produced from 1932 to 1936, first passenger car produced in the Soviet Union, near-exact copy of the Ford Model A from 1930. The "Gazik" was popular with the citizens wealthy enough to afford one, and by 1935, 100,000 had been built at GAZ, including enclosed saloons (GAZ-6), light lorries and pickups (GAZ-4). The contract between Ford and the Soviet Union was dissolved by mutual agreement and in 1936, production ended after 41,917 cars alone in favor of the improved GAZ-M1. Some were used by the Red Army as staff cars, but they lacked 4x4 capabilities. They were used for the earliest Soviet armoured cars, the DA-8 and DA-12, which were not very successful.
Development of the "Gazik"
The cooperation between Ford '=(Motor Company) and Russia started in 1909 when the Tsar publicized his effort to modernize the Empire and call for investors. Ford soon became an important supplier of passenger cars and commercial vehicles, with the first Russian tractors and trucks being 1910s Fords. However the war and Russian Revolution shattered these plans. In 1922 however, the new Soviet Authorities tried to renew these old links and seek Ford assistance once again. A contract led to the importation of tens of thousands of Fords into the Soviet Union as its vehicle industry remained underdeveloped.
The first ideas about the need to organize licensed production of foreign-brand cars in the USSR for the purpose of speedy motorization of the national economy began to be heard as early as the beginning of the second half of the 1920s. The main option for following this path seemed to be the production of American-brand cars, which were already being mass-produced and whose technical competencies in organizing large-scale production could be applied in the USSR. The magazine "Behind the Wheel", founded in 1928, already in its first issue published an article by E.A. Chudakov "The Future of the Automobile Industry in the USSR", which argued for the advisability of choosing a "tested type of foreign car" and its delivery in the form of ready-to-assemble vehicle kits with the parallel deployment of production of the same model using our own resources and parts manufactured in the USSR.
In order to reduce the cost of finished products by saving on the scale of production of similar parts, car production should be carried out not by a large number of small and medium-sized enterprises, as in Europe, but by several auto giants capable of producing 100 thousand cars per year. The names of the preferred brands of cars were not given in the article, but the vector of the discussion had already been set. In issue No. 3 of Za Rulem for the same year, the Ford Company made a kind of response in the article “The Ford Company on the Motorization of the USSR”:
“The possibility of the participation of American industry in the motorization of the USSR is a complex issue. We have not yet fully accustomed ourselves to the laws and customs existing in the USSR, and it is possible that for this reason we are waiting for the first step from the USSR. Naturally, the Ford Company and many other automobile firms are very interested in the development of motorism in the USSR.”
Perhaps the first step was made by the Soviet side somewhat earlier - in the total import of cars to the USSR, Ford cars already occupied a noticeable size, and by 1929 the volume of Ford imports exceeded a thousand units per year. Be that as it may, Ford's interest in cooperation with the USSR was noticed and on December 19, 1928, the Soviet side went to negotiate with Henry Ford and, at the same time, with General Motors. Ford offered more interesting conditions and on May 31, 1929, a ten-year agreement was signed between the USSR and the Ford Company, according to which Ford provided patents for the production of cars, technological equipment for their production and was to provide technical assistance in establishing their production in the USSR and training Soviet workers and employees.
In addition, the agreement provided for the right of the Soviet side to receive technical documentation for new Ford models for nine years (later this right was used in the creation of the next Gorky model - GAZ-M1). The USSR, for its part, was obliged to purchase at least 72 thousand vehicle kits, which were to be assembled on the territory of the USSR for three years, while the construction of an automobile plant for the production of cars under Ford license from parts produced in the USSR was underway. The design of the automobile plant in Nizhny Novgorod was commissioned from the Detroit company Albert Kahn Inc., named after its founder, architect Albert Kahn. Between 1929 and 1932, Kahn's company designed more than 500 objects for the USSR. These were, first of all, tractor (tank), aircraft and automobile plants.
The first "Fords" in the USSR were released in December 1929 by the Kharkov Automobile Assembly Plant, which received one hundred Ford-A and Ford-AA vehicle kits. The second, on February 1, 1930, was the 1st Automobile Assembly Plant, located on the territory of the Gudok Oktyabrya plant in the city of Kanavin, Nizhny Novgorod Region. This plant assembled mainly trucks, but in the middle of 1930, a batch of 218 Ford-A units was also assembled. Finally, on November 6, 1930, Soviet Fords began to roll off the assembly line of the 2nd Automobile Assembly Plant in Moscow (since December 26, 1930, the State Automobile Assembly Plant named after KIM), which assembled Fords from vehicle kits for the longest time - until the end of 1932.
The three plants produced 3,804 Ford-A passenger cars, mainly phaetons (a certain number of Ford-A with closed bodies also came in vehicle kits, but their share in the total volume of Ford-A was small). The Nizhny Novgorod Automobile Plant, planned as the main one for the production of Ford-A and Ford-AA, began its work on January 1, 1932. In the second half of January 1932, the plant mastered the production of cylinder blocks, crankshafts, frame side members and a number of other parts. Without waiting for regular deliveries of components from related enterprises (in particular, sheet steel), the cabins of the "pre-production" trucks were assembled from plywood, and on January 29, 1932, the first NAZ-AA cars rolled off the assembly line of the Nizhny Novgorod Automobile Plant. Almost the entire year was spent on mastering the production of the Ford-AA truck, and passenger Fords appeared only in December, which was due to underdeliveries of components from related enterprises. By the end of the year, instead of the planned 696 phaetons, only 34 were assembled. However, this was still considered an achievement.
GAZ-A (Nizhny Novgorod was renamed Gorky on October 7, 1932, so the Ford-A series immediately went under the GAZ brand - only two experimental phaetons, assembled in August 1932, were called NAZ-A) was a copy of the Ford model A Standard Phaeton 35B, which was produced in the United States itself in relatively small quantities - the main production object in the Ford Company was the Ford-A with a Tudor Sedan body. Externally, the Soviet GAZ-A differed from its American parent by the absence of additional small headlights installed on the sides of the windshield. Also, the GAZ-A received a radiator grille with a mask of a simpler, almost rectangular shape (the Ford-A had a small "beak" on top). The design of the car did not shine with innovations and bold engineering solutions, but at the same time, the "A" family was the latest Ford development at that time, and it was also impossible to call the Ford architecture archaic.
On April 17, 1935, the hundred thousandth car rolled off the GAZ assembly line. It was the GAZ-A, intended as a gift to the People's Commissar of Heavy Industry G.K. Ordzhonikidze. The hero of the day was dressed up: the body, unlike the black and olive serial brothers, was painted in two colors - burgundy red and milky beige. The radiator cap was stamped with a special emblem, and its grille was decorated with a nickel-plated diagonal nameplate "100,000" and the inscription below "Sergo Ordzhonikidze from the Molotovtsev collective 1935". The "festive" options included two electric signals, two small additional headlights like those of the Ford-A, located in the lower corners of the windshield frame, and two spare wheels located in the niches of the front wings (in production models, the only spare wheel was attached to the outside of the rear wall of the body.) All visible chassis elements and body parts, usually painted black, were nickel-plated.
By 1935, the new GAZ plant had delivered circa 100,000 vehicles, mostly GAZ-AA trucks, the remainder being GAZ-A and derivatived vehicles based on the same chassis. Also in 1935, the contract between Ford and the Soviet Union terminated by mutual agreement. Back in the US, anticommunism was getting on the way of business. In 1936, production of the GAZ-A ended after 41,917 cars produced, as the new fully enclosed and more modern GAZ-M1 was introduced, again with some initial help by Ford. The GAZ-A was declined into several vehicles, inclusing an enclosed car, an ambulance and an utility lorry, as well as an armoured car. The GAZ-A was also of course used by the Army and became its first staff car.
Design of the GAZ-A
General layout
All units and assemblies were attached to a stamped riveted trapezoidal frame with side members and box-section crossmembers.
The spoked wheels were suspended by two transversely located semi-elliptical springs. The front one rested on the I-beam of the front axle, the rear one - on the "pipes" of the half-axles of the rear axle. Smooth running was ensured by hydraulic shock absorbers of the rotary type.
The body made of stamped parts was also an example not so much of artistic design as of utility: an engine compartment with opening "book" sidewalls, a simple interior, no trunk. Four doors mounted on the front hinges, like those of modern cars. The windshield rotated in the frame and was fixed with wing nuts, and the need for this "option" arose not in the summer heat, but on the contrary - in frost, so that the glass frosted over from the breath of the riders did not obstruct the view. In case of bad weather, the canvas top could be supplemented with canvas sides with small celluloid windows, but there was no heating system.
The phaeton had a single wiper mounted on the upper rail of the windshield frame in front of the driver's face to fight the rain. The wiper had a vacuum drive, so it was connected to the carburetor inlet manifold with a hose. (The Ford did not have an air filter.) As a result, the "wiper" demonstrated its greatest efficiency at idle speed.
Two solid "sofas" allowed the driver and three passengers to sit in the "boat" of the cabin with relative comfort. The simple instrument panel included three gauges: the already mentioned window for monitoring the fuel level, an ammeter and a speedometer. The latter was quite unusual: the numbers printed on the drum replaced each other, informing the driver of the speed, showing up in the fixed "eye" of the instrument. The engine operating mode control system is quite remarkable.
In addition to the accelerator pedal used for "operational" changing of engine speed, two "tactical" levers were installed on the steering wheel, behind the hub. The left one allowed manual adjustment of the ignition timing, and the right one - to fix the position of the carburetor throttle valve. The starter was activated by a trigger located above clutch pedal, and the gas pedal "tablet" could easily be confused with the support for the driver's right foot, located slightly to the right and below. It is not surprising that the description of the engine starting procedure took up one and a half pages in the factory instructions.
Engine and performances
The engine design was fairly typical for those years: in-line, four-cylinder, flat-head. Moreover, the cast-iron cylinder block was cast together with the upper half of the engine crankcase, and the lower half was steel, stamped. The cylinder head was also made of cast iron. Gasoline from the tank located above the knees of the driver and front passenger, behind the dashboard, flowed by gravity into the carburetor, which had no air filter. The inconvenience associated with the close proximity of people and fuel was compensated by the ease of monitoring the amount of gasoline in the tank: the driver simply watched the position of the float through a special transparent window in the instrument panel.
The piston group was lubricated by splashing. At the same time, the engine design did not provide for not only a fuel pump, but also an oil filter. The mechanisms of the car used only 21 rolling bearings, seven of which were roller bearings, and the rollers were wound from steel strips. Babbitt plain bearings used in the crankshaft supports and in the places where the connecting rods landed required refilling with babbitt every 30-40 thousand km. The design of the valves did not allow for their adjustment, so if necessary, the gap was increased or decreased by grinding or slightly "forging" the ends of the rods. According to Lev Shugurov, the low compression ratio (4.2) in hot weather allowed this engine to run even on kerosene.
The cardan shaft with a single hinge on the gearbox side was also enclosed in a pipe rigidly attached to the main gear housing. The mechanical service brake acted on the "drums" of all four wheels through a cable drive; the belt "handbrake" blocked only the rear ones. The front part of the frame housed the power unit, consisting of an engine, clutch and three-speed gearbox. It remains to add that the design changes made by engineers during the period of preparation for the production of the Ford-A in the USSR in order to adapt the model to production and operational realities were reduced to a minimum: the clutch housing and steering mechanism were reinforced, and the engine intake system was equipped with an air filter.
Variants of the GAZ-A
- GAZ-A: Main production version. Produced 1932-1936.
- GAZ-A-Aremkuz: 3rd-party conversion, enclosed 4-door at Moskow's Aremkuz plant.
- GAZ-AA: Pickup truck produced 1932-1938.
- GAZ-4: Pickup on the GAZ-A chassis, produced 1933-1936.
- GAZ-6 "Pioneer": 2-door sedan on GAZ-A chassis, produced 1933-1936.
- GAZ-AAAA: Prototype 3-axle based on the GAZ-A. GAZ-AA cab, rear drive from GAZ-AAA. 2 side-mounted spare tires to overcome obstacles.
- GAZ-TK: 3-axle car based on the GAZ-A, produced 1936-1938
⚙ GAZ-A specifications |
| Weight | 1,080 kg (2,381 lb) |
| Dimensions | 3,875 x 1,71 x 1,78 (152.6 x 67.3 x 70.1 in) |
| Wheelbase | 2,630 mm (103.5 in) |
| Suspension | Leaf springs |
| Propulsion | 3.3 L GAZ-A (Ford L-head) +3-speed manual |
| Speed | 60 kph |
| Range | c300 km |
| Armament | None |
| Payload | 500 kgs. |
| Crew | 1+4 |
The GAZ-A in service
GAZ-A was intended primarily to meet the transport needs of Soviet institutions and enterprises. A significant portion of the output was received by the military - even as of January 1, 1941, the Red Army still had 2,757 GAZ-A vehicles and another 378 5AK mobile radio stations (pictured above) mounted on these vehicles. In addition to the phaetons themselves, GAZ supplied large batches of GAZ-A chassis to the Izhora Plant and the Vyksa DRO Plant for the production of light armored vehicles D-8, D-12 and FAI. GAZ-A entered service with taxi institutions in various cities, which made it possible to unify their diverse composition and simplify the supply of spare parts.
Nevertheless, despite the "service" focus, any citizen of the country could easily win a Ford-A or GAZ-A in the Osoaviakhim or Avtodor lotteries. Also, private individuals had the opportunity to purchase phaetons under special auto obligations - provided that the buyer made monthly payments, the state guaranteed him the receipt of a car in 1-4 years - photo 1. However, this option was offered only to active members of "Avtodor" - being a simple NEPman with a sufficient amount of money was not enough to purchase a personal car. But rewarding the best workers or cultural figures with a GAZ-A phaeton was not at all uncommon.
It should be noted that in operation, the GAZ-A began to cause numerous complaints from drivers immediately after the start of production due to, as they believed, the low quality of the cars. In fact, there was initially a certain error in choosing the production facility - the Ford-A was structurally poorly suited for use on the then roads of the USSR. The network of highways in the USA was much more developed and most of the problems that Soviet drivers encountered were simply unknown there.
Therefore, despite the fact that the GAZ-A was exactly the American Ford, the result of driving along the "directions" in the USSR, which replaced asphalt roads, was the failure of almost all units of the Nizhny Novgorod phaeton: the most durable units (engine, gearbox, drive axle) could go up to 25 thousand kilometers without major repairs, while the rest - even less. It is not surprising that the question of the need to replace the GAZ-A with a new model arose before Soviet designers almost immediately. The production of the GAZ-A continued until January 1936, when it was replaced by the GAZ-M1. In just over three years of its existence, 41,917 cars were produced on the conveyor.
Another interesting story was connected with the GAZ-A. With the start of the GAZ-M1 production, every institution or private owner in Moscow was offered to exchange their Ford-A or GAZ-A manufactured before 1933 for a new "emka". It is noteworthy that no additional payments were required for the exchange. During the whole of 1936 and the first quarter of 1937, 2,500 GAZ-A were exchanged in Moscow. A similar exchange of GAZ-A for new GAZ-M1 was also carried out in other large cities of the USSR - in Leningrad, Kyiv, Kharkov, Odessa, Tbilisi, Vladivostok and a number of other cities, about 1,200 cars were exchanged by April 1, 1937. By April 1937, there were still 4,700 GAZ-A cars left in Moscow, of which about 1,000 belonged to private owners. Apparently, by this time, interest in such an exchange had somewhat waned, because on April 21, a Resolution of the Council of People's Commissars was published, ordering the completion of the exchange of GAZ-A phaetons for GAZ-M1 by July 15 of the same year.
First of all, the exchange was supposed to affect private owners. Moreover, the value of the cars being handed over had already been assessed, and the owner had to pay the difference in price when receiving a new "emka". This could also be done in installments - over the course of 1-2 years. Moreover, the handed over GAZ-A was required to "...be in good technical condition, fit for operation, have a set of tools and a spare wheel with rubber." From July 15, 1937, based on the order of the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs - General Commissar of State Security N. Yezhov, a ban on the complete ban on the movement of GAZ-A and Ford-A phaetons in Moscow came into effect.
ORUD inspectors and police officers were charged with the duty of detaining all such cars on the streets of Moscow, regardless of their ownership. Drivers of such cars were to be arrested for 3-5 days, passengers were to be fined 100 rubles, and the heads of the garages to which the detained car was attached were to be brought to criminal responsibility. In addition, phaetons with license plates from other regions of the country were also to be detained when entering Moscow. Thanks to such measures, a total of about 8,000 GAZ-A and Ford-A phaetons were forcibly replaced in Moscow with GAZ-M1 sedans.
From March 1, 1938, the use of phaetons was also prohibited in Leningrad.
The reason for such draconian measures was the authorities' idea of how the updated capital of the first communist state should look - Moscow was undergoing a major reconstruction that radically changed the appearance of the city, and the car no longer fit into the new wide streets and avenues. To test the military and expeditional potential of the GAZ-A, several modified vehicles took part in the Karakum run of 1933: Some of the vehicles were equipped with "super-balloon" tires - one of the tasks was to check how much such wheels improve the vehicles' cross-country ability compared to standard tires.
The GAZ-A was also used in militar service from the start. Officers looked for a proper Soviet model for liaison betwen unit, and the moderate off-road performances of the GAZ-A were good enough for the job. The lack of road was an issue in USSR, but 1920s Fords were designed to be handled on no more than dirt roads, also abundant in many corners of the US. In Russia however, winter, spring and autumn conditions were not friendly to the car, which struggled in adverse terrain, and only were valuable in the summer, albeit excessive dust could clog the radiator. With their large tyres and good suspensions, they could do also limited grass runs, againg if conditions were there, and perform on paper some limited reconnaissance.
The military GAZ-A was identical to the civilioan model but by its olive green paint and canvas-color tarpaulin. In some cases in winter, the same tarpaulin received canvas extensions with plastic windows to be fully enclosed. It had no armament, not any specific feature but symbolism as well. How many were used is a mystery, but probably more than two thousands. Albeit they were replaced by a proper 4x4 GAZ, the model 64 in 1935, many of these were still around when WW2 started, notably used between barracks and HQs as well still sometimes by border guards or the NKVD.