Imitation being the sincerest form of flattery...(Russian Cars)

[Jim B PEI]

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Russian-Zim-Gaz-12-1951-/120633818214?pt=US_Cars_Trucks&hash=item1c1655fc66#v4-37

While the later Chaika (seagull?) limos by ZIL very heavily favour 55-56 Packards in all their plagarisms (remember, no parts interchange, even though they went so far as to copy a pushbutton automatic control), this 51 ZIM favours the 46-50 Packards (of course) but there almost seems to be a bit of KF in there too.

[Logan]

Definitely see the KF in the dashboard.

[Jim B PEI]

That's what I was thinking (me with a 49 Kaiser)

[kaiserfrazerlibrary]

I will try this one more time...

The counsul running the San Francisco counsulate for the USSR was ordered home and the counsulate closed in 1948.  When he left, he took the facility's best car--a 1947 Frazer Manhattan--home with him.  It is the only K-F product known to have gone to Russia during the time K-F was in operation.  The fate of the car is unknown. 

[84RabbitGTI]

Fascinating.  Thanks for the link!  I've always been interested in Communist-era cars.

[kaiserfrazerlibrary]

It was a standard practice to take the best features of cars from the west and incorporate them into their products (without getting permission, patent licenses, etc).

[Jim B PEI]

I too am impressed by the 47 Frazer fact; hadn't known that one. I had seen the Packard and other luxury car links and the numerous discussions over the years. Fun is watching Jeremy Clarkson et al driving some of these 'barges'. The Chaika for quality (and needless complexity) rivals Packard's last sad years in 55-56 in Detroit, but even so the Packards were in comparison built by obsessive Black Forest engineer elves on steroids. Having grown up near Canada's national capital Ottawa, and lived there many years, I of course had the chance to observe many of these cars in action (or inaction) in the diplomatic residence parts of the city. Besides the Chaikas, I also saw lots of Skodas, Wartburgs, and the like. Remember, for many years we had dealers selling East Block cars to the public, and there were lots of Ladas, both the Fiat 124 like brick, as well as Samaras and Niva 4x4, the Czech Skoda 110LS ? (actually rather nice for an East Bloc car--the water-cooled rear engined one with the front trunk, like a Corvair, but better as it was a nifty side opener.) the Rumanian ARO 4x4 and Dacia cars (pale shadows of the Renault 12) and the like.

As well, there were Diplomatic imports of cars never sold in North America. The Dutch had DAFs long after they stopped selling them here, all of Africa imported Peugeots and other French cars, but my favourite car ever was the Argentinian Kaiser Carabela (deep rich red, with maroon leather interior) in Ottawa well into the 70s, and flawless.

[kaiserfrazerlibrary]

As far as I am aware in Washington, the preference was to use American cars as there were issues with service and parts (you would have to keep significant quantities of spares and mechanics well versed on staff because USA was not metric).  There was also the appearance of sub-standard quality if your embassy limo was down for days (or weeks) because you had to get a spare something from the home country. 

I do, however, remember various Iron Curtain countries attempting to launch distribution in the USA.  The most successful was the Skoda.  We had a fair number of them (for an import line) running around Southeastern Wisconsin until the Cuban missle crisis put the kabash on Communist goods from any nation.  I know that Einsach Motor Werken (EMW) was sold on the East Coast and that there was considerable discussion around 1960 about trying to bring in the Moskavich and/or the Volga.  Some fired up Congressman, the story goes got a rider tacked on to a spending bill banning the sale of Moskovich and Volga cars (by name!) in the United States & that law is still on the books as far as I am aware.

[Jim B PEI]

The Embassy cars were sometimes not used much--perhaps for that reason of parts etc. The Chaikas, well, the ZIL and ZIM and whatevers, were lovingly polished and parked in full view. The Soviet residence (and Embassy building too) in Ottawa were and are on very accessible streets in Ottawa's Sandy Hill neighbourhood. At the residence you could walk right past the Chaika, within a couple of feet of it.

Sad to say, the US and some other other democracies (at least in Ottawa) have always had residences and embassy buildings that were much more lavish, "kingly" and very remote from casual view. Mixed messages indeed, well before the security barriers in the last few decades.

Of course, the regular cars 'with the red diplomatic plates' used by embassy staff would be M-B, BMW, Chevs, Fords, Dodges, Volvos Audi VW etc as well as national makes. Staff, however, often imported models of cars not actually on sale in North America with the 'wrong' bumpers or less compliant engines just because they were more fun and because they could.

Of the odd makes, the DAFs and the Kaiser(s) were actually regularly used for real-life uses!!

[HJ-ETEX]

So that brings up an interesting round of questions, did the USSR also copy the Packard Ultramatic transmission? If they did, were the Russian copies any more reliable? Were the Russians stupid enough to copy the vacuum wipers used on Packards?

[Jim B PEI]

I think the Chaika Jeremy Clarkson video on Utube describes the "Seagull" fairly well, as well as some of the other awful East Blok cars. Some of the videos are painful, and funny.
Here is a link, but Wikipedia also has a lot of stuff.
http://carbaze.com/car/index/15732/gaz-chaika/info

It was NOT produced with the dies from Packard production as has often been said incorrectly, but it was a faithful recreation of a 55 Packard with some Mercury touches. (An earlier ZIM? limo was an even more faithful recreation of a 42 Packard 110, based on reverse engineering) These cars had big V8s with 4bbl, and a 3 speed automatic similar to a Chrysler Torque-Flite with pushbuston transmission control. A later update looked even more like big Mercurys of Hawaii 5-0 ancestry. Very heavy cars...