Sam Glover
Sam immerses himself in Soviet motorsport history
Sam plays wacky races behind the Iron Curtain.
Motorsport was extremely limited in the Soviet Union after WWII, largely thanks to a lack of cars and roads. A handful of requisitioned Auto Unions and other foreign racers fuelled an initial flurry of activity, but the Communist Party snuffed this out in December 1948 by banning the use of foreign cars in official competitions. It ordered the then ‘big three’ of the Soviet motor industry – GAZ, ZIS and Moskvich – to set up their own racing programmes.
None produced cars that were naturally suited to motorsport. The Moskvich 400-420 was more-or-less a pre-war Opel Kadett, with an apathetic 23bhp 1.1-litre side-valve engine and Dubonnet suspension. The ZIS-110 – a 2.6-tonne Packhard rip-off with a 6.0-litre straight eight – was as sporty as an aircraft carrier. Thus, the GAZ M20 ‘Pobeda’ became the unlikely darling of formative Soviet motorsport. The Pobeda was a creditably advanced car in the late Forties. While not exactly race-bred, its unitary construction, independent coil-sprung front suspension and 50bhp 2.1-litre sidevalve straight-four gave GAZ’S hastily-assembled competition department something solid to build upon.
The climax of the Fifties Soviet racing calendar was a ‘linear’ endurance race on a closed section of the Moscow-minsk road, chosen on merit of being the USSR'S only continuous stretch of decent tarmac. The course was a straight 150km, a U-turn and a straight 150km back. It gave rise to some magnificently Wacky Races GAZ prototypes, built under the leadership of engineer Andrei Lipgart and flamboyant aerodynamicist Alexey Smolin. The 1950 race saw the appearance of the first Pobeda ‘Sport’ models with semiridiculous streamlined duralumin bodywork and supercharged 78bhp 2.5-litre engines, the fastest of which achieved an average speed of 161km/h. Even more cartoonish teardrop-shaped ‘Torpedo’ racers debuted in 1951 and attained 166km/h.
The race was limited to production vehicles from 1952 to 1954, but the Pobeda Sport was allowed back in 1955, when the format changed to five laps of the 44km Minsk ring-road. That meant corners. One of the Pobedas won – but only by a nose, as they struggled to compete with open sports cars of amateur entrants that were stiffer, nimbler and easier to see out of. Thus, GAZ designed its own open-bodied Pobeda Sport with a twin-spark and twin-carburettor 85bhp 2.1-litre engine. It claimed first and second in 1956. Here the project ended.
Drifting through Gorky
No original Pobeda Sports of any variety are known to survive. In 2015, however, Moscow-based car historian Ivan Paderin built a replica of one of the victorious 1956 cars. I got the opportunity to admire it on a drizzly day in GAZ’S home city of Nizhny Novgorod (formerly named Gorky). As I truffled around under its bonnet, Ivan asked if I’d mind delivering it to the other side of the city. I said that I wouldn’t mind at all.
After the ungainly performance of getting in, I found the view through the perspex aero-screen and along the curvy bonnet very satisfactory. The large, rakishly-angled steering wheel and long but snicky gearstick made for a sporting driving position, marred only by pedals spaced too widely for heel-toeing. Ivan’s car has a throaty 140bhp engine from a later GAZ 3102, leading to a very perky power-to-weight ratio. The challenge, I found, was not so much keeping up with modern traffic as resisting the urge to race it at traffic lights.
Coker crossply tyres, meanwhile, ensured an amusing power-to-grip ratio. The handling was pointy and straightforward. Not allowing the rear to hang out on wet roundabouts would’ve required more self-control than I possess. Other road users treated it with a very un-russian level of respect and shouted questions enthusiastically through rolled-down windows. Naturally, I was entertainingly ill-equipped to answer. It was, in short, a hoot.
Should anyone fancy owning the car, incidentally, it could be yours for £30k. Ivan has his sights set on building a streamlined 1950 Pobeda Sport with the proceeds, so it’d be going to a very good cause.