Talk:Automotive industry in the Soviet Union

Vandalism
I improved the article with new and sourced information, new models, higher resolution photos in accordance with WP:CARPIX (most of them are of the highest quality and the cars depicted are in excellent condition) and entire paragraphs, but there is some vandal 37.55.206.58 (Pashko) who has made attempts to remove all the edits, delete a number of models and change the photos to those of battered cars. His vandalism will not be ignored. Eriba-Marduk (talk) 09:04, 23 November 2015 (UTC)
 * After that he made another attempt and claimed that "GAZ-GL1 never entered production, Lada Niva depicted on previous edit is not 1977 model and so on. Before changing you must make sure the information is correct", despite the fact that he doesn't know what information is correct and is trying to delete almost every photo of a clean and original car that I have posted. The GAZ-GL1 was built and even set a speed record on September 22, 1940, which was a notable achievement for the Soviet automotive industry in general (see: Весна в стиле ретро // За рулём, вып. 8, 2010). Eriba-Marduk (talk) 14:44, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Slapdash article
Somebody slapped an abstract from his class paper into wikipedia. Data is wrong (GM Uzbekistan, UzDaewooAuto and others appeared LONG after the collapse of the USSR), information is VERY wrong (somehow it appears that GAZ and VAZ appeared almost simultaneously while they are actually 60 years apart), the language is terrible. Will try to fix it as much as I can.

And I really like this part: "The automobile industry in the Soviet Union is unique amongst automobile industries in the world. Until the October Revolution, very few Russians could afford cars."

SO DID THE WHOLE WORLD! And it didn't change much for the Soviets even AFTER the Revolution.

Leo711 (talk) 04:34, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Language issues
The article features a very Russian-like English. It has to be edited to be more readable for a native English speaker. schmalter--81.18.114.15 (talk) 13:27, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Strongly disagree. I don't think it was written by a Russian. It's just bad English, full stop. Leo711 (talk) 04:37, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Exactly, fools stop! The article written by some Russian chauvinist. Aleksandr Grigoryev (talk) 15:36, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Car ownership
This article is claiming that most of the cars in Russia prior to the USSR were owned by the royal family. That must be absolutely false. In such a vast country with big population like Russia, there was a sizeable number of rich people who could easily afford cars. --B. Jankuloski (talk) 06:28, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
 * That's not entirely incorrect. There WERE some rich people in Russia, but most of them didn't care about cars. Cars were viewed as smokey stinky noise-mobiles, not things of prestige. So while many people COULD buy themselves a car, very few actually did. So in that aspect, it's true - most of the cars in pre-USSR Russia belonged to the Tzar family. Leo (talk) 05:53, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

Gaz aka Gaz
Surely the latter is supposed to be "Volga"... DubZog (talk) 21:01, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Not really. GAZ was the name of the plant, "Volga" was the car it manufactured. Example - Dodge is a brand. Viper is the name of the model. Leo711 (talk) 09:50, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

SAE (US), metric, or?
What measuring system did the Soviets use? I couldn't find it at USSR, I also couldn't find it at China. It should be here, shouldn't it? What was used when?

My question was: Soviets knock off US trucks, SAE or Metric? Chinese license build the Soviet trucks, SAE or metric?

Thank you. Sammy D III (talk) 15:58, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Soviet knock offs is metric. Missioner20 (talk) 23:33, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

Correction:If you meant horsepowers,they use the SAE;carbodies and spare parts was measured in metric. Missioner20 (talk) 06:07, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Is ZiS a Studebaker?
It is sometimes said in the US that the Soviets built the Studebaker US6 as the ZiS/ZiL 151, a direct copy, without having a license.

The US6 was not all Studebaker parts. The cab, which the Soviets copied very closely, is the one we see (the first ZIS trucks had wood cabs). A ladder frame with 3 beam axles on leaf springs is pretty basic.

The US6 had a Hercules engine of 320 c.i.d., the ZiS’s 6.55 liter comes out at about 400 c.i.d., not very close. It also has metric dimensions. They were both valve in block, hardly very advanced. The Soviets also had Chevrolet/GMC overhead valve engines, a more advanced design, which they did not use.

Much of the US6 is vendor parts, Spicer, Bendix, Timken, etc., some also used by Chevrolet and GMC. I do not know how closely they were copied. The US6 had 20” wheels, probably with vacuum/hydraulic brakes (GMCs did), the ZiS had 18” with air brakes. Some ZiS dimensions are larger than the US6.

I do not see that the ZiS 151 was a direct copy of the US6, so it would not have been a stolen Studebaker design built without a license. It appears to be a very close, but not exact, copy, possibly of US trucks in general.

zis 151 along with zis 150 was copied from the '1942-'1945 International Harvester K 8.Now you can see a direct resemblance. Missioner20 (talk) 05:59, 3 October 2014 (UTC)


 * I am completely confused. I see the cab, no vent windows, which are on Studebakers only, I think. Ware(2010) p 181 has a drawing which must be wrong.


 * The K8 is a much smaller truck than the ZiS, I don’t see that they could have modified it that much.


 * The US6’s Hercules engine and the ZiS’s are both side valve, the IHC Red Diamond, between the other two in displacement, had overhead valves, huge difference.


 * During the war US6s (and some GMCs?) were sent to the USSR, the IHC 2 ½ trucks were mechanically quite different and supplied to the US Navy/Marines.


 * I got IHC K8 from http://content.wisconsinhistory.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/ihc/id/36747/rec/8.
 * ZiS 151 from http://www.the-blueprints.com/blueprints/trucks/zis/47768/view/zis-151_%28same_to_zil-151%29_chassis_arrangement/ and http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZIS-151 (German Wiki w/Russian sources).
 * Studebaker and IHC 2 ½ tons from Doyle(2003) pages 122-127.


 * Early ZiS 151 had wooden cabs, until sheet-metal stamping was available. Could the chassis come from a US6 (and GMC), the cab later from the IHC K?


 * I also posted the US6/ZiS stuff at the US6 article.


 * It’s nice to have someone to talk to. Good luck fixing the article. Sammy D III (talk) 13:25, 3 October 2014 (UTC)


 * The answer is no, the ZiS is a completely different car that wasn't supposed to copy anything. Every single part of it is different, the layout of the chassis and the construction of the cabin are different, too, and all were designed from scratch. The only thing the ZiS-150/151 has in common with the Studebaker is that both of these trucks belong to the same class and epoch, hence the same size and superficial similarity between them. Except for the general layout, there are just two different and unrelated trucks designed and produced by different manufacturers and not based on each other. AutoHistory (talk) 12:54, 24 December 2017 (UTC)

What on earth is this really?
This is some of the worst, most xenophobically biased bullcrap I have ever read. The cold war is over, get used to it!!

Look at this:


 * "It began with assistance from Western manufacturers and continued with copying of Western car models without buying a license during the Cold War"

Now that kinda sounds like stabbing Santa in the back, doesnt it?

Name ONE unlicenced copy of a western car? No, the Packard resembling cars are not unlicenced copies and may even have been built with production gear bought from Packard. Is a Dodge van a copy of a Chevy van or vice versa, and did the copycat have a licence? Even worse, is a '75 Malibu a copy of a Fury from the same year? Are there many ways of making a 3 step automatic gearbox, or a differential? _________________________________________________ A similar design does NOT make anything a "copy"! _________________________________________________

And if it actually was a copy or derivative, who said it wasnt licenced? Petty, petty people you say, and easily forget that even Rolls Royce, the king of automobiles did this. They made copies of GM gearboxes and Citroen suspension systems that they used in their cars. Probably licenced.


 * "Also, at the beginning of the 1960s it became clear Soviet industry was not able to design and launch a decent car for the masses."

They had already designed and launched several cars for the masses, many of them advanced for their time.


 * "FIAT was chosen because[citation needed] at the time Italian communists were gaining power in Italy and it was a good chance for the USSR to show support."

?????? How would that help?


 * "AZLK (Автомобильный завод имени Ленинского Комсомола): originally part of GAZ, was an official "competitor" of VAZ"

"competitor" = make-believe competitor that really isnt?


 * "Soviet industry annually exported 300,000-400,000 cars, mainly was to Eastern Europe, but also to Western countries. Quality of production was not very high."

Have any of you ever owned a Lada? If you had, you would know that it actually has higher quality than the Fiat of which it was derived.

I have driven and done mechanic work on a GAZ M20 "Pobeda", that was exported in for the time large quantities to Europe. It is sturdier than any normal American car of the time, and at the time of its launch even more modern. Except for the engine that is, it being (licenced) a Dodge construction. Its successor Volga was also popular amongst taxi drivers, as were Moscwitch, they were all known as good cars. Yes, we also had American cars to compare them with..

This all makes me think of the story made by the American businessman who supposedly "smuggled" a Pobeda, which "no private person could own" out of Finland. It was probably bought at a Konela dealer.

Why are you degrading yourselves to set forth suchs claims that you obviously dont know too much about? If the commies brainwashed people things couldnt have been much better at the other side of the other side of the iron curtain, when the bullcrap persists to this day.

Get a grip people, the cold war is over.. And remember, politicians are too stupid to make cars. ;)

Rolling Phantom (talk) 15:13, 3 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Have any of you ever owned a Lada? If you had, you would know that it actually has higher quality than the Fiat of which it was derived.


 * My brother's wife owned one, and it is common knowledge here in Jamaica that the only way a Lada could be made reliable is to replace as many of the parts as possible with Fiat parts.


 * At least they didn't put their badge on upside-down too often. They did with my brother's wife's car, though; she could tell her car apart in a line of red Ladas immediately as a result.


 * Sincerely, SamBlob (talk) 19:43, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

We had plenty of Ladas here in Norway and they were known as good cars, although old fashioned. But ok, no smoke without a fire. You can of course not disregard that Russian automotive factories did have quality problems and there are stories on that they were disassembled and known flaws corrected before they were sold. But often very little is enough to damage a reputation, not least in the car industry. A bad clamp here, a faulty relay there and the whole thing is crap. Fiats are not known as the best cars around either and the Lada 2100 series have some improvements. E.g. the body has twice as thick steel as the original Fiat 124 and I think also the undercarriage is more solid. Lada engine is more modern than the original's push rod engine and is quite solid despite cam chain rattle and no oil pressure at idle when the mileage goes up. You wouldnt know in Jamaica but Lada has a very good cabin heater, you will at least never get cold. You could go on, but the base line is "forever to own is only a bad reputation." as we say here. But enough of that discussion. What got me somewhat pissed is the biased content in the article, stating that ALL SovietRussian cars were "copies without a licence" of western cars which is pretty far from the truth, just as little as you can say that many western cars are "copies" of one another. Only examples I can think of is the GAZ factory started out as a Ford factory and made Ford models in the beginning. The first Moskwitch actually WAS an Opel Kadett as the Russians took the whole factory and moved it to Moscow after the war. Not even Stalin's Packard clones were direct copies and were anyway made BEFORE the cold war so a collaboration with the original manufacturer cant be excluded. Some even say the Chaika's body panels were made with dies from the original 1955 Patrician, the last model made by the Packard factory. I know for a fact that the Pobeda's engine was a partial Dodge design (the differences are too big to call it a copy in any case), and the plans were BOUGHT from Chrysler. As said before, a similar design, whether visual or technical, does NOT make anything a copy. I can see the page has once again been vandalized, this time by a character calling himself "Neverguesswhathappened". I see he has vandalized several pages on Russian cars, claiming them to be "copies without a licence" of similar western cars (even in cases where the Russian car came around BEFORE the western car.), removing information on who designed the car (as in case of the Pobeda) and so on. I dont know what his agenda is, he may be Ukrainian but hating old Russians that has nothing to do with the matter, and trying to blacken their reputation with vandalizing Wikipedia pages isnt going to help his case. And in any case not Wikipedia's case either, so I ask you to help me tell him not to do that.

Rolling Phantom (talk) 12:28, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

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Old CIA report as a source
The page has been improved recently, but I believe that in the 'Postwar' section we should have used a modern secondary source instead of the old declassified CIA report, as the latter was compiled a long ago, when the authors had no access to Soviet archives and had very limited knowledge on the subject matter, contains inaccuracies not supported by any evidence and being at odds with established facts and modern publications. For example, the postwar section erroneously claims: "Much of this extensive growth was sustained by the import of Western technology". This, however, is true for the prewar period, but there is obviously no evidence for such import in 1945-1950, except for the German reparations, in the beginning of the Cold War. It goes on to add: "US truck and engine designs acquired through the Lend-Lease program were used to establish the postwar generation of vehicles", but that is plain wrong, as the US trucks made up only a minor part of Soviet postwar vehicles, most of them were sent back to Western countries in 1946-1947, and the only postwar Soviet engine based on an American design was the YaAZ-204; all other US engines were acquired in the prewar period, again. The claim is apparently incorrect and highly marginal. Neither modern authors like Andy Thompson, who study Soviet automotive industry, nor any other evidence agree with the statements cited above. I think it would be better to replace those two problematic claims with some reliable information taken from modern scholarly works. AutoHistory (talk) 13:49, 24 December 2017 (UTC)