GAZ AA (diecast 1:43, Dvigateli Factory USSR)

This is GAZ AA truck. The model / toy is from The Soviet Union in scale 1:43. On the model the doors open and sadly on my model the front bumper is missing.

January 29, 1932 is the birthday of the first serial Soviet truck GAZ-AA. A truck with a load capacity of 1500 kg, developed by the engineers of the Gorky Automobile Plant, is known to all of us as a lorry. This car became the most massive truck in our country in the first half of the twentieth century. In total, 985 thousand cars were produced at 4 factories (almost a million!).

The truck fell in love with drivers for its simplicity of design and reliability, its assembly did not require high qualifications, and repairs were easy to carry out in the field, which greatly helped in the formidable years of World War II. The units and assemblies of the "Lorry" were the same as those used in the designs of many types of military equipment, and the "gazik" itself had over fifty modifications - from a bus, a tank truck, a fire truck to an armored vehicle.

This simple and reliable machine was destined to pass all the heroic trials that befell the Soviet people. The car distinguished itself by hard work during the years of the first five-year plans, and then in the restoration of the national economy and destroyed cities after the Victory.

Withstood the truck and the hardships of the Great Patriotic War. The lorry, familiar to every boy from films and books, has become the same symbol of war as the T-34 tank, Katyusha and the three-ruler.

Guest from across the ocean

The first five-year plan (1928-1932) was going on in the USSR, the tasks of which were completed ahead of schedule - in four years. The country adopted a plan for the rapid development of all spheres of society and the creation of a powerful industrial power. Over 1,500 various industrial and production facilities were built and developed throughout the country. To accomplish this large-scale and ambitious task, a large mass of trucks of all types, the "workhorses" of rapid industrialization, were required.

The Soviet Union was dependent on foreign supplies of cars, but especially on expensive spare parts for them. The need for their own full-fledged production lines was felt more and more acutely. And soon they began to appear.

It was decided, in cooperation with American engineers from Albert Kahn Inc., to build an auto giant near Nizhny Novgorod, which, according to the plan, was to produce up to 100 thousand trucks a year. There were not many options to choose from: AM General did not agree to cooperate with the USSR, but another auto giant, Ford, offered its services. The company itself was then undergoing modernization, and Ford's T-generation cars were replaced by new ones - A and AA. Just a Ford AA. It met all the requirements, and therefore was chosen as a sample. The new truck took on board one and a half tons of cargo, was simple, reliable and unpretentious, and most importantly, our engineers developed their own version of the truck, made adjustments to further simplify the design, but with a multiple increase in its reliability.

Development and production

In record time, in collaboration with engineers from Albert Kahn and Austin Co. By the beginning of 1932, a new Soviet auto giant had grown up in the USSR near Nizhny Novgorod (near the village of Monastyri). In October of the same year, the city was renamed Gorky, and the car received the designation GA3 familiar to us. The workers mastered the assembly process, and by that time the personnel at the plant were already quite qualified. By the end of 1932, the plant was assembling 60 trucks a day! And since 1933, the car has become completely domestic, assembled only from Soviet components and did not require any foreign supplies.

Years of war and work

By the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, the Red Army and the national economy of the USSR had an impressive fleet of vehicles, but the losses affected, and it was necessary to speed up the production of trucks of all types as much as possible.
The engineers of the Gorky plant went in an extremely simple way: they removed everything superfluous from the lorry. There were no metal or plywood doors, they were replaced by canvas linings. The roof was replaced by an awning with a small window at the back. The wings were bent from simple roofing iron, and one wiper, one headlight and front brakes had to be abandoned. The body now leaned back only from the rear, and not from three sides. The lorry has become a reliable workhorse of Soviet military drivers. Simple and unpretentious. Another interesting modification was also created - the gas-generating GAZ-42, a car with a stove that ran on wood.
More than 300,000 lorries, together with our army, went through the entire war, retreating and then advancing, carrying the wounded, serving as liaison and airfield vehicles. They worked day and night in the steppes of Ukraine and the mountains of the Caucasus, in the Arctic, and then in Europe. But most importantly, during the years of the siege of Leningrad, they transported hundreds of thousands of tons of military cargo and food across the ice of Lake Ladoga, along the Road of Life.

The lorry showed fantastic survivability and maintainability and met the requirements of wartime. Drivers, talking about the war, often mention that where German or French captured trucks got bogged down, unable to cope with broken front roads, our GAZ-AA crawled briskly, showing a fighting character.

In total, until 1951, about a million one and a half were produced. After the war, the truck returned to its classic appearance. The car participated in the restoration of the country, it could be found in the cities and villages of the USSR until the end of the 60s. These days, the legendary truck is nowhere to be seen on the roads. It can only be seen in a cinema or a museum, and samples restored by enthusiastic reenactors can be seen at celebrations and exhibitions. But this can hardly make it less significant for the history of the country.