Russian GAZ 66 A deluxe pickup

[john charlton]

Just watched Paul Shinns latest video about the 66 A deluxe pickup . Very informative as usual well worth watching . I added a comment that the Russian GAZ plant built them also some have come up for sale in Eastern Europe a while back . There was a WW2 picture on the net of a GAZ 66 A wrecked and partially stripped on the side of a road . I think the wheels had gone but certainly a saver !!! Where is my time machine ??? Can anyone pull this picture up and post it please . A mystery why the Russians would build a pickup like this maybe for a commissar . ???

John in warm humid evening Suffolk County England .

[Brad in Germany]

The 66A in Paul's video was restored by Vernon Burks in Shelby Ohio and was later owned by my late-friend and neighbor here in Maryland. It was produced by Ford for the Firestone fleet (thus the red color; see below photo) (not General Electric). Since my late-friend's estate sold the vehicle, it has been flipped several times......interesting to see that it ended up on the west coast now. Here is a photo of it in front of the church here in Maryland where my late-friend is buried (may his soul rest in peace).



....and an era photo of a Firestone Deluxe Pick-up:




As for the Russian clone of the Ford 66A Deluxe Pick Up, it was the GAZ-4. Here are a couple photos of GAZ-4's:







Brad in Maryland

[rotorwrench]

The GAZ 66 that I'm more familiar with is a cab over truck design. GAZ made a lot of A and AA designs. They went to the 1933/34 looking model 61 car after that but kept thr AA type trucks longer. The model 61 looked like it had a truck frame and had a lot of ground clearance. They imported a batch of 95 hp V8s for special built cars going to high ranking officials and NKVD agents.

[ndnchf]

I noticed the red truck has a '31 style radiator shell, the russian truck a '30 style. I've not seen clear evidence, but am under the impression that '31 comercial trucks carried over the '30 shell, but in black. These are kind of special trucks, so that may not be the case for these.

[Joop]

The radiator shell on the Russian truck is a deluxe A-AA commercial shell not a regular car shell

[Brad in Germany]

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Originally Posted by Joop

The radiator shell on the Russian truck is a deluxe A-AA commercial shell not a regular car shell

To go a little OT, all Russian GAZ-A based vehicles ("regular car", passenger cars and commercial vehicles, etc) all had the exact same shape radiator shells.....the only difference being either painted black or chrome. The GAZ-A "regular car" radiator shell has the same shape as the US Ford AA commercial radiator shell (just not as wide on the sides).

Here for example is a GAZ-A "regular car", fresh off the GAZ assembly line, clearly showing its correct GAZ radiator shell (looks like the deluxe US commercial radiator shell):



....or on this GAZ-A in the basement of the Moscow Polytechnical Museum:



Note the GAZ-AA truck in the background in the above photo has the same shape radiator shell, just painted black. .....same exact radiator shell shape as the radiator shells on the GAZ-4 photos I posted above.

Here is a close-up of the same GAZ-A (Pheaton) radiator shell:


Brad in Maryland

[ndnchf]

Great info, thanks.

[History]

What does “Gaz” mean? Model ?

[rotorwrench]

Gorkovsky Avtomobilny Zavod was the Gorky Automobile Plant. They were purchasing a lot of equipment from Ford Motor Company to start building Ford type automobiles and trucks in the USSR during the 1930s. The Soviets basically bought a lot of obsolete equipment from Ford Motor Co in order to build their own vehicles. Charles Sorenson has a whole chapter in his book about all the things that Ford did to help them develop their resources for auto manufacturing. Ford didn't own any of this set up like they did in Koln, Germany before the war. The war changed all that. The Soviets paid all their bills to Ford according to Charlie.

[History]

Thanks, I forget I can google things sometimes.

[Roger V]

Originally Posted by ndnchf

I noticed the red truck has a '31 style radiator shell, the russian truck a '30 style. I've not seen clear evidence, but am under the impression that '31 comercial trucks carried over the '30 shell, but in black. These are kind of special trucks, so that may not be the case for these.

Since it was a "Deluxe", it came with the stainless passenger shells. Also true for the Town Car Delivery. The pickup supposedly was designed for General Electric. You can Google that though it's been published in a couple of books.

As an aside, I knew Vernon Burks as he lived a couple of blocks from my parent's house. When I visited them I also would visit Vernon. It would typically be six hours as Vernon would go from Model A to Model A telling how he acquired each. Bare in mind he had forty plus Model A's and ten others. All were A's, no AA's. I don't recall the Deluxe Pickup story exactly but I think he found it relatively close, like in the Sandusky area. I believe he had it at one of the M.A.R.C. National Meets though not for competition. Vernon has been gone for quite awhile but he worked on his A's into his nineties.