From the history of the car - Volga (7 photos)

Soon, the Volga brand, known to all of us since childhood, may become part of history. Since 1956, the Volga has been a dream car for Soviet, and subsequently Russian, citizens for almost half a century. But, like Moskvich, Chaika and ZIL, this legendary Soviet car brand is close to ceasing to exist.

It just so happens that for the Gorky Automobile Plant, the Volga is at the same time a source of legitimate pride and... a long-term headache. The first Volga GAZ 21, born in 1956, became a kind of symbol of the “thaw” of the fifties and sixties; films were and are still being made about this car. It was successfully exported, received awards at international exhibitions and was, without exaggeration, the only “premium class” car available to Soviet citizens, as they would say now. After all, it was the “twenty-first” Volga that was the first among “people’s” cars to acquire such a “bourgeois” curiosity as an automatic transmission. It was a truly successful and extraordinary car, and, perhaps, the most iconic car of all developed and produced in the USSR.

Starting in 1968, the GAZ-21 was replaced by a successor - the future long-lived GAZ-24. This car also became a symbol of its era and, despite the VAZ-2101 that appeared almost simultaneously with it, it was the domestic Volga that for many years was considered the top model of the Russian automobile industry (ZILs do not count for ministers in this case). This car was destined for an extremely long assembly line life - it was the “twenty-fourth” Volga and its subsequent modifications that became the most popular passenger car in the entire history of GAZ.

Volga strengthened its “premium” status in 1981, when the “director’s” GAZ-3102 was born. This car was rated almost as highly in the USSR as Mercedes or Volvo. If not higher, since it was the GAZ-3102 that the party nomenklatura drove, and the traffic cops, as soon as they saw the characteristic chopped silhouette, immediately took it under their visor. But with all the advantages, this car also had a significant disadvantage - age. After all, it was based on a design that was almost fifteen years old. That is why, in the mid-eighties, the development of the next generation of Volga, the GAZ-3105, began. This car was supposed to simultaneously replace both the GAZ-3102 and the GAZ-14 “Chaika”. Of course, first of all, party officials and officials were supposed to switch to the new Volga, and only then it was planned to release its simplified modifications for “mere mortals,” taxis, police and other services.

And since in the mid-eighties of the last century the USSR was the second world superpower after the USA, the GAZ designers were given very ambitious tasks - to make a modern, well-equipped car that was not inferior to its world analogues. A country that launches dozens of rockets into space, builds nuclear submarines and has enormous scientific and technical potential simply had to have good cars. This is what the Volga GAZ-3105 should have become. And it would have, if not for the so-called “perestroika” started by M. Gorbachev, which led to the collapse of the USSR.

As for the car itself, it was a very successful project. Nothing like this had ever been produced in the USSR. The car was distinguished by an unprecedented level of comfort. There was power steering and an adjustable steering column, ABS, air conditioning, heated and electric seats, electric windows, an all-wheel drive system with a differential lock from the driver's seat. Under the hood is a 3.4-liter V8 with a power of 170 hp. with which a five-speed manual transmission was combined. True, the car weighed almost two tons and consumed more than seventeen liters of fuel in the city. But who then cared about such trifles? After all, gasoline in the USSR was cheaper than mineral water. The first pre-production samples were assembled already in 1987, but it took almost five years for the car to go into production. True, by that time the situation in the country had changed a lot. The party nomenklatura disappeared as a class, and officials hastily switched to foreign cars. And the price of the Volga GAZ-3105, given the small production volumes, turned out to be too high. A total of 55 cars were produced (according to other sources, 67) and in 1996, production of the car was discontinued. History is modestly silent about how much its development cost the country. GAZ-3105 turned out to be the pinnacle of the evolution of the Soviet automobile industry, and... the beginning of the end of the Volga brand.

The second attempt to replace the veteran GAZ-24 (31029, 3110) on the assembly line was made immediately after the GAZ-3105 ended its short life. And again the Gorky team managed to create a very extraordinary car. The car received the index GAZ-3111 and, according to the idea of its creators, was supposed to not only replace the old “twenty-fourth”, but also compete on equal terms with European and Japanese E-class cars. The strength of the GAZ-3111, of course, was its “neoclassical” design. The appearance of the car turned out to be quite modern, but at the same time retained the “ancestral” features of GAZ cars. Like its unsuccessful predecessor GAZ-3105, the new Volga also had good equipment: power steering, ABS, central locking, electric windows and LED taillights. The car was equipped with a 2.5-liter ZMZ 4062.10 engine with a power of 155 hp. and a five-speed manual transmission. In the future, it was planned to use a more powerful ZMZ 4064.10 engine (200 hp), as well as six- and eight-cylinder imported engines and automatic transmissions. The disadvantages included the presence of components from the GAZ-3110, in particular the rear continuous axle with springs. But this was a temporary measure and in the future the Gazovites would probably bring the car to perfection.

The first GAZ-3111 rolled off the assembly line on New Year's Eve 2000, and then... it turned out that no one needed this car either. The new Volga was expensive, suffered from many childhood illnesses, and besides, the trust of Russians in domestic cars, against the backdrop of an increasing number of foreign cars, was, if not completely lost, then greatly undermined. A total of 428 copies of the Volga GAZ-3111 were produced, after which this project was buried. GAZ is trying not to remember how much money was wasted again.

In 2003, Nizhny Novgorod residents tried to develop a more budget version of the Volga - GAZ-3115. The car was lowered a step lower - to the D class, equipped with a multi-link rear suspension and a 2.3-liter engine producing 130 hp. But things did not go further than prototypes, and this is where the history of the domestically developed Volga can be considered complete.

But this was not the end. In 2006, GAZ again decided to step on its favorite rake. But now it was decided to do it “wisely.” A “Varangian guest” was invited from abroad - Swede Erik Eberhardson, who shortly before headed the Volvo Trucks representative office in Ukraine, and was also recognized as the best manager of 2006. It was Mr. Eberhardson who came up with the brilliant idea to buy a Chrysler Sebring production line in the USA and transport it to Russia. For some reason, the best manager of 2006 was confident that Russian buyers would line up for the Chrysler Sebring as soon as they started making it in Nizhny Novgorod, and at the same time they would also call it “Volga”. Well, so that Russians who are greedy for everything foreign remember that the new Volga is the most foreign car, for some reason they also came up with a synthetic, unpronounceable name for the car: Siber. This time, the price of this more than dubious undertaking is known very well - $290 million. That is how much GAZ paid for the Volga Siber production line, its installation and commissioning. The first cars rolled off the assembly line in July 2008, and over the entire last year GAZ produced 2,151 Volgo-Sibers. For comparison, approximately the same number of Lamborghini supercars are produced per year. But Eberhardson’s plans were truly Napoleonic - at least 60,000 cars per year.

Now the GAZ workers sadly state that they produce cars at a loss. Once again, no one was found to blame, as in all previous cases.

And just the other day, the story came to its natural conclusion - it became known that after all 10,000 purchased vehicle kits are used up, the production of Volga Siber will almost certainly be stopped. This is understandable - who in their right mind would produce cars at a loss, and even in a crisis?! In addition, we must not forget about the difficult situation of GAZ, whose debts exceed 55 billion rubles. There’s no time for “Volgo-Sibers” here...

So, goodbye Volga? Or is this not the end of the story? As they say, time will tell.