Description
By: Andy Thompson .
When the Communist Party took control of Russia and neighbouring states in October 1917, it inherited a country with virtually no motor industry. While Britain, Germany, America and France already had factories mass-producing cars, the Soviets had three tiny assembly plants and a large vehicle workshop in Moscow. However, by the time the Soviet Union dissolved at the end of 1991, its engineers, designers and workers had created one of the world's largest motor industries.
What made the Soviet motor industry so different was its unique background. The Soviet Union's communist system was the world's first and largest attempt to create a new type of society. For more than 70 years, cars and vans were designed and built not to win market share and make ever-greater profits but to meet a clear social and economic purpose. Every car and van had a place and a role to play in keeping the wheels of Soviet society turning; designers and engineers were given clear instructions on what that place and role would be. Ideology and policy were never far from the top of those design briefs, either to demonstrate to the West during the Cold War that communist engineering was just as good as the capitalist kind or to offer a carefully graded structure of cars to reward revolutionary heroes.
The vast natural environment also played its part. Soviet motorists were faced with driving huge distances across a landscape that included some of the coldest and hottest places on earth, a country that spanned Europe and Asia, the Arctic Circle and the Caucasus region. Service stations and motorways were few and far between in such a huge country, making reliability and serviceability far more important than chrome and carpets.
The rest of the world took note and Soviet-made vehicles were sold across the globe. Nearly two decades after the demise of the Soviet Union itself, its cars and vans are still to be found, living examples of what was a truly unique motor industry. Cars of the Soviet Union is the story of those vehicles.
Andy Thompson has had a lifetime interest in the cars and vans that are the real backbone of the world's transport systems. He has owned more than 70 different cars and vans, all of them working vehicles, ranging from a 20-yearold Toyota Starlet used to travel across West Africa to a primer grey Morris Half-Ton Pickup used to haul washing machines around East Anglia. Brought up in the Midlands, he currently lives in West Cumbria with his family and dogs, and now drives a Humber Sceptre.
