Russian Auto with US Heritage

[TerryB]

My son was in Seoul Korea for his job a while back.  One of the pics he sent me was from the museum for the Korean War conflict.  The car shown was captured by the South Korea forces.  It was a car used by one of the North Korean leaders, supposedly a Russian made model.   Sure seems to have family ties to a popular US car brand.  Ask the man who owns one!

 

Edited March 24, 2018 by TerryB (see edit history)

[J.H.Boland]

It is a Zis.The Russians built them for high ranking Soviet officials,using 1942 Packard dies,I believe. Stalin had a four door convertible Zis 110 B for a parade car. I may stand corrected on details.

Jim

[nzcarnerd]

Reverse engineered from Packards, seems to be the thinking.  The Russian leaders already owned several Packards and figured their own car should be based on one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZIS-110

[Rusty_OToole]

There was a lot of discussion about this model on the Packard club website. It seems the car was copied from the Packard but no parts interchange. All dimensions, nuts, bolts, bearings etc are metric and while they resemble their American counterparts, are not the same.

 

The car was meant as transport for high ranking officials but were also used as ambulances.

 

The factory mainly produced heavy trucks. Here is a documentary about the last 3 parade cars they made and the factory they were made in. The factory is now closed and demolished.

 

https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/witness/2014/05/last-russian-limousine-2014528113543724920.html

[Bleach]

The Russians seemed to like the Packard look that replacement for ZIS 110, ZIL 111 resembled 55/56 Packards.

 

[Rusty_OToole]

American cars suited Russian weather and road conditions so they looked to Detroit for inspiration, back when American cars were world leaders. Even the smaller 4 cylinder jobs seemed American influenced. Starting in the 70s they looked to Europe for new designs.

[Bleach]

The GAZ-24 Volga to me looks like it was influenced by the 1st gen Chevy II.

 

Their main people mover, was a the Fiat 124. They built it under license as the VAZ-2101.

[JACK M]

There is one of those in Hanoi Viet Nam at the Ho Chi Minh memorial. I think it was the capitol complex where he lived and worked.

The story was that Russia gave him a few cars as gifts. He was a car guy. Go figure.

I walked thru his tomb and they have him propped up in there for all to see.

 

Since I am waxing nostalgic I threw in a couple of pics of the Hanoi Hilton. Its a memorial now.

Note the broken glass and barbed wire in lieu of razor wire.

[mhocker]

A few years ago, I wrote an article on these vehicles for the library column in Antique Automobile. The library has a small collection of literature pertaining to Soviet-built cars, including the ZIL/ZIS. I believe the car you have a photograph of was the same one that went on tour throughout the U.S. after it was captured. In fact, after finishing the article we came across one of the flyers distributed to promote the exhibition of the captured vehicle. It came in with a bunch of other random odds and ends. 

 

If you would like to read the article, click here. And here is the catalog entry describing the flyer.

Edited March 26, 2018 by mhocker
Additional information (see edit history)

[West Peterson]

Other than the grille, it looks more like a Cadillac.

[TerryB]

Matt, thanks for providing the link to the story.  Quite interesting to see how Stalin held the Packard in high review and threw in a few Cadillac touches to cover the US luxury market.

 

Terry