Today I offer you a short interview with a man who decided to restore a vintage car and, in my opinion, did an excellent job with this task.
1 This is the GAZ-M-20 Pobeda. Now it is completely like new: the turn signals turn on, the wipers work, the radio plays. The car is running, but it takes a long time to warm up. They say it needs 66-grade gasoline, but due to the lack of it on sale, the engine runs on any.
2 A couple of years ago this car didn't look so shiny. In an ordinary garage, work began on recreating a historically accurate car from two pieces of scrap metal.
3 Of course, such a hobby is quite common, and enthusiastic people restore not only cars, but also tanks, airplanes and anything else that takes their fancy. Where do you think all these retro runs, auto exotics and other rallies come from?
4 And of course, in this case, more than one person was working on the car.
5 Now that everything is finished and the guys are experiencing great creative satisfaction, Anton told us some of the nuances of this interesting activity.
6 -- Anton, what was your role in this whole matter?
— I completely controlled the entire construction process, ordered and searched for spare parts, and daily acted as a think tank. In short, how to do it, where to attach it, where to find “this crap” - I did this.
7 -- Who else was involved in the project?
- In general, 3 people worked - a welder, a mechanic and an assembler. The work lasted 2 years.
8 -- Initially, the idea to recreate a full-fledged classic car from junk was yours? Why did you want to do this? How did you know how to do everything?
— Initially, the idea was mine and my father’s. We began to choose a car that could be restored. The choice was between the Volga GAZ 21 and Pobeda. But the 21st Volga can still be found on the road, and a number of companies are engaged in their restoration, so the choice fell on Pobeda. None of our team has ever restored a car. Everyone learned and started from scratch. We got drawings from the factory, photos on the Internet, spare parts catalogs from the 50s and began to slowly do everything. Almost no one around us believed that we could finish the job.
9 -- Did automotive education help?
- Of course, without this it would be impossible to do it at all.
10 -- How did you look for old bodies and how did you buy them back?
- Everyone here has their own story. For example, this car that we restored sat in a garage for 20 years after its owner died. We bought it for a ridiculous 40 thousand (the program for recycling old cars, from which we probably saved this Victory, had not yet begun). Further, according to the ad, we bought 2 more Pobedas, one was disassembled and most of it was thrown away, and the other is now in the form of a body after sandblasting, you saw it in the garage on a lift. (see photo at the beginning of the article)
11 -- Where did you get the missing parts from?
- Everything here is individual. We searched through advertisements and garages. I ordered the instrument panel in Ukraine, rubber bands in Moscow and St. Petersburg, chrome was made in Nizhny, a number of parts were made in the region.
12 -- Have you shown this car to anyone yet? Didn’t they take you anywhere to retro parties?
- We finished it a week ago. They didn’t show it to anyone, they didn’t take it anywhere. There are plans to participate in a retro run, auto exotics and a couple of promotions.
13 -- What was your biggest challenge in this project?
— Probably the biggest difficulty we have now is to restore the documents and register them. Among the technical difficulties, the body was asymmetrical due to the peculiarities of production at that time. I had to do an almost surgical operation to cut the rear wing and weld in the amplifier.
14 -- It was difficult with the tires. Pobeda tires were equipped with I77 tires, which could be in several versions, including southern ones (we have regular I77s on the front wheels, and southern I7s with a different side tread pattern on the rear wheels). Tires can now be found for somewhere around 3-4 thousand apiece! Other parts that were difficult to find were the “bird” on the hood and the trunk hinges; they were made of silumin and after so much time they simply broke like matches.
15 -- Did it take you a long time to choose the paint color? )
- No, I came up with the color before the project, I knew how it should turn out. It took me a long time to select paints. I spent about 2 hours at the picker to choose a decent color combination.
16 -- Where is the salon from? It is unlikely that it was preserved in the source code. I think it's well made.
-- It was made completely original, although almost all Victories that other people have restored have leather or inauthentic interiors. Everything we have is original, even the fabric pattern is exactly the same as the original Pobeda. The fabric was ordered in St. Petersburg! All plastic is new. The roof upholstery was also ordered 2 times in St. Petersburg, but it turned out to be unsuitable in size and had to be sewn and modified manually. But the most difficult thing in the interior is the decorative window frames painted to resemble wood. They were made using original technology using a roller and a matrix, and then finished by hand. The design was applied with a thin brush.
17 -- Did you plan to get any commercial benefit from this? Or advertising.
-- Certainly. The project is purely commercial.
18 -- So now you want to sell the car?
- I think so, in six months. But selling in Russia is not interesting; there are plans to sell in Europe or the UAE.
19 -- Don't you mind?
-- Very sorry. Still, so much effort was spent, like on a child. But we are starting the second Victory, so there will be no time for pity.
20 -- After every successful project, there is an ambition to do something else at a new level. Will this be the second Victory?
- Yes, there are already 2 projects in the pipeline. Another Gobeda in the original (but older, with a different grille) and a victory in the style of Rat-Rod.
22 We wanted to drive this Pobeda out of the garage area and take photos on the road. But it turned out that the car is not suitable for driving on snow (maybe due to the southern rear tires). We had difficulty moving it even on this site - it was slipping so much.
23 I think in the summer it will be possible to shoot it on regular roads. There will be documents and weather conditions. By the way, the car does not have side rear-view mirrors, it is not allowed. How to drive it in modern conditions!? )
24 In cold weather, this car is not so easy to start and warm up: you have to pull some kind of choke and manual throttle. Then warm it up for a long time. No one has been warming up modern cars for a long time - they turned the key and drove off.
25 A special pride is the radio receiver. He catches music out of thin air and screams through his only speaker.
These are the kind of craftsmen you come across.
