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There are many ways to tinker a car. Be it based on papier-m?ch?, toy bricks or plywood. This thread aims at the target to show you, that some serious engineers of the fabled Muscovite car factory ZIS could not resist of fueling the inventive spirit, even amidst still smoking ruins.
The attached pics lead you astray, the talk revolves around a Soviet 1:1 model.

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Basics
Part of the narrative, to be told here, is the "Act to Promote the Defense of the United States", better known as Lend-Lease Act.


I make no pretence of a certain smack of the following introducing movie (duration: 5min 13sec). To be honest, it is of doubtful quality. But good enough to outline the historic background of my story.

<iframe width="500" height="375" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TpDL1BzN3wU?rel=0&controls=0&showinfo=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>


sources
pic - Wikipedia
video - Youtube

The tale is set in CCCP in the end of the 1940s. The economy was broken up, an useful infrastructure almost non-existent and horses and carts were in wide use even in the streetscape of big cities.




Woe betide anyone who had to convey goods interurban. Latest with onset of the autumn showers the roads became impassable. The same applied for the period of thaw. Everything engulfed knee-deep in seemingly endless mud.




Not only usual people suffered from the situation, but the red barons too. On the cusp of the age of Sputniks in the land of milk and honey they had difficulties to reach local villages, even for traveling to neighboring towns the politicans had to use off-road vehicles. But how to change?





sources
pic #1 - LIFE
pic #2 - lexikon-der-wehrmacht.de
pic #3 - fotki.yandex.ru

Seems to me that's our "beloved" shoe thumping Nikita in the last photo!

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Yes and no. That's Nikita Khrushchev. But just like the above embedded educational film, this pic seems to be a toxic legacy of the cold war. Have a close look at the shoe, please. Would you hold a shoe that way to thump on a desk?
Professor William Taubman commented -> on this matter in the New York Times. He is author of a Khrushchev biography, which won the Pulitzer Prize.
That's -> the statement from James Feron, who reported from the United Nations in a 40-year career.
For connoisseurs of art the -> whole nine yards.



image source: abendblatt.de

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Hundreds of thousands military vehicles (tanks, trucks, Willys "Jeeps" etc.) formed a very important part of the supplies. To convert them into all sorts of civil vehicles was natural after the war.


Studebaker

Apropos: The following interesting paratrooper vehicle is on display in the Russian museum Союзники и Ленд-лиз (Allies & Lend-Lease) in Moscow.

sources
pic #1 - waralbum.ru
pic #2 - lend-lease.ru
pic #3 - Wikipedia

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Finally the thoughts and desires of the engineers focused on the Dodge WC-51.



This vehicle, half truck and half car with a load capacity of 0.75 ton was available in Russia in a large quantity.



It marched through the mud like a water buffalo (below a six-wheeler with tire chains in Okinawa).



It was utilized very broadly for many purposes in all branches of the U.S. military through World War II (and the Korean War). The Russian inventiveness had been in no way inferior, here an ambulance.



Out of such conversions the plan arose to combine the cross-country mobility of a Dodge with the comforts of a ZIS.


sources
pic #1 - us-militaria.com
pic #2 - olive-drab.com
pic #3 - deviantart.net
pic #4 - plam.ru

On the surface it seemed mechanical feasible to set the ZIS body on the Dodge chassis. By rule of thumb both cars are huge and the Dodge frame was strong enough to shoulder the fat Russian. But don't start to measure.
Compared to a ZIS the Dodge is a dwarf. Take its 13 foot 11 inch or better the 15 foot of a Humvee or even the unending 18.5 foot length of a Chevrolet Suburban, but nobody of them will reach the majestic level of a ZIS-110 (236.2 inch). Next to a ZIS wheelbase of 148 inch, the Dodge wheelbase of 98 inch looks comperatively small.
For visualizing the difference I used a pic of the better known Humvee.

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To lengthen the frame was a working step, already done by Dodge to convert the base of a WC-51 into a chassis for the WC-54 ambulance and radio car.




The frame consists of pressed steel channel section side rails reinforced by heavy cross members and angle braces. It has a longer 121-inch wheelbase with the addition of a heavy reinforcing plate riveted to the outside of each frame rail.




The Soviets did the same but extended it to 148 inch wheelbase. Easy job in theory.


sources
pic #1 - world-war-2.wikia.com
pic #2 - pinodesign.nl
pic #3 - minitracks.forumpersos.com
pic #4 - war department technical manual

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A "retired curmudgeon" you and I know used to use a somewhat similar epigram to that in the photo captioned "In theory, theory and practice are the same"!