Packard Forum Index » ZIS, ZIL, and other Packard Cousins!

The Soviets were undoubtedly very adept at obtaining what they considered the best of available technology and, "reverse engineering," things to their requirements. It would appear that this was, indeed, the case with the ZIS and ZIL automobiles. From appearances, and in the case of the ZIS, they didn't do a bad job although, from what I understand, the actual execution and production methods sometimes left a little to be desired.

Very, very interesting. I had been curious about these cars since first seeing photos of them in the early 1950s and this is more information than I've ever found.

4th pic above has a red sign in the lower rite corner "orohek". What does that mean???

Johnie ! Voy Govorete poRusskia Yazika ? If not, on what do you base your assumptions about the STALIN MOTOR WORKS?

Yes, of course we know that the Russians moved MANY (but not all) of their production factories so far east that the Germans did not have the range to get at them.

I personally have NO idea where the ZIS was made during the Second World War - perhaps our German friend would know ?

In any event, Gousha's interesting posts explain and answer my question - with Stalin so determined to "put on a good show", it does not surprise me that bomb damage to the STALIN MOTOR WORKS, if any, ( that's ZIS to you guys who cant translate Russian) was quicly repaired, and thus not visible (or cleverly edited out) of post-war photos .

P.S..Johhnie boy - did you see my answer to your questions (and apparentd dis-belief) on why the late Packard Twelves, which shared SHEET METAL BODY parts with the Super Eights, were much more rugged, NOT INTERCHANGEABLE WITH ANY SUPER EIGHT FRAME, RUNNING GEAR, SUSPENSION, ETC ? Did that answer your questions ?

A ZIS 110 is just passing thru Northern New Jersey on its way back to Russia via Stockholm. The deal was brokered by a Packard friend of mine who deals extensively with the Packard folk in Scandanivia. It's a green convertible sedan (parade car) with the "handlebar" behind the front seat for the parading standing dignitaries to grasp. I'll get a few pictures next Tuesday and add them to this post. This will be the 5th ZIS-110 I've seen, not too bad for an American.

I second Mr. Smiths comments of a most informative thread. Would it be possible for you to start another on the 50's era ZIL?

naw...I wouldn't rate that thing as a "Packard 120"...oh..perhaps..I'd give it about a 107.5...?

Peter: From THE WORLD OF AUTOMOBILES Volume 22 Orbis Publishing Limited London 1974. I refer you to pages 2609 to 2610. During WW II the ZIS factory equipment and top staff were moved for safety to Urals and Volga where the
Chelyabinsk, Miass and Ulyanovsk car and truck works and the Irbit motor cycle works were established

John F. Shireman

Very interesting, John - thank you for your informative "post". Hopefully, I will see that book someday.

I dont know all that much about Russian manufacturing. The article you refer to is only partially correct.

ZIS was "Stalin's Pet", so obviously, anything is possible given his well known brutal temper. Given the chaos and urgency of the war years, who knows what source, talking to people many years AFTER the war, looking at documents from communist sources....got ANYTHING right about Stalin's nutty priorities..anything is possible.

The article you refer to, if correct as to ZIS auto production being moved, would account for the lack of battle damage !

Does the article go into any detail as to which manufacturing plants stayed in "European" Russia & thus near combat? Some did. Not all were re-located out of harms way.

For example, there were points in time where Soviet tanks & armored trucks came out of final assembly, gassed up and armed while still on the factory grounds, and driven directly into combat a few miles away from their respective factories.

One thing for sure - thanks to yours and other contributor's posts, this nonsence about a ZIS having ANYTHING to do with Packard, other than the obvious copying of SOME design features, is pretty well put to bed ! Thanks, John !

Here's an interesting side-note about trying to understand Russians and books about them... ! Who knows why there are no garages in Russia ?

Here's why I am suspicious of ANYTHING written about Russia, that uses Russian sources for info....!

Oh, sure, if you operated an automobile in Russia during the communist years, you could take it to any number of places for repair. But no garages. Seriously !

Here's why. The FRENCH language was the language of Russian "society" up to the communist take over. I read someplace that the Czar's kids spoke Russian badly, as a SECOND language to the household's use of French (this is understandable, as French, not English, was then the international language of diplomacy.) Good communists showed how "loyal" they were to the "new equality" under communism, by not using "imperialist" words!

Now - the Russian communists CLAIM Russians invented EVERYTHING - if you can read cyrillic, you can see that the Russian word for "telephone"..is in fact..TELEPHONE...as is the Russian word for "automobile"..yup....AUTOMOBILE.

Oh oh....comes the Russian Communist Revolution, and all things "capitalist" and "imperialst" are suspect. You do NOT want to be using French if you are pretending to be a good communist in communist Russia ! With all the paranoia, a one-way ticket to Lubianka Prison would be likely.

Now...what to do about those places called "garages" during the Czarist days, where you take those Russian cars in Russia, to be repaired...?

They were quickly changed to say, (in cyrillic, of course! ), M T S. Now...what is MTS ? Well...THAT's what they substitued for the word "garage". THAT is what good communists ( if they wanted to remain live good communists) started calling all their garages...!

I love to tease my Russian friends about their CLAIM that THEY invented all that technology. Ha ha..joke is on them-what greater example of their "problem" with precision of speech, then their having to give up the word "garage"...a WESTERN European word, and MANUFACTURING a goofy combination of words CLEARLY not Russian, in order not to use the hated French word "garage"....

MTS ? Stands for " MACHINE TRACTOR ( REPAIR ) STATION !

Here is a picture of special built ZIS 110.

John F. Shireman

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