Volga GAZ-21 (Part 1)

Nowadays it’s difficult to imagine the life of a modern motorist without the presence of tow trucks and recovery vehicles on the roads. Breakdown recovery services are ready safely and quickly to bring faulty vehicles to destinations at all hours. It’s probably impossible to ascertain who designed the first specialized vehicle for towing broken cars, but it’s easy to surmise that similar mechanisms probably existed from the late nineteenth century, and emerged a little later than the invention of the car itself.

Tow trucks, as such, were practically non-existent in the USSR. So, when it came to a breakdown, the soviet citizen either had to apply his physical power to push the car, or use a tow and neighbor’s car to get to the nearest workshop. The soviet automotive industry produced not only lots of civilian car models, but also various specialized hardware. Tow trucks and other recovery vehicles, however, were never on serial production. Such vehicles began to appear on the post-soviet territory only in 1990’s. But before that period, in the Soviet Union, there were very few craftsmen, who managed to create unique vehicles for breakdown services.

Presently, the only extant handmade recovery vehicle in Armenia from that period is this GAZ-21 of 1960 production. In those years, this car “tirelessly worked” in special services.
In 1960, the second taxi fleet of the capital got another batch of Volga-M21A cars specially designed for a comfortable ride for urban population. The brand new Volga of second generation was an impressive and respectable car, which provided unprecedentedly comfortable ride in those times. The drivers of other vehicles were simply green with envy, since among the available cars for soviet people the new GAZ-21 was the most expensive and prestigious one.
To be continued...