Russian station wagons!

A cold war era Chiaka station wagon! From Stalin on down, the Russian Elites loved them some Packard's! Here's a example.

 

And a Volga.

 

Never knew that about Russia. A chiaka?! That thing is cool! Love that grill. Wonder if there’s any of them left. Where did you get this information? Have you been colluding with the Russians?!

 

The Chiaka looks a lot like a 58 Ford wagon.

 

There are some websites devoted to USSR era motor vehicles. I've always loved "forbbforb fruit" aspect of them. No collusion, I swear!

 

Forbidden!

 

The Chiaka might have been a Packard copy. Back then, copyrights were not recognized, on the other side of the fence.
By the way, some of those brands were manufactured in other Soviet Countries, besides the Soviet Russian Republic. That rear-engined sub-compact, in that other thread, was made in the Soviet Ukrainian Republic, for example

 

Yes. I should have more correctly called it "Behind the Iron Curtain Wagons". All kinds of unusual ( to us anyway ) vehicles.

 

The Trabant was made in East Germany before the wall came down. Its body was formed from a fiberglass like resin and recycled cloth! Elements in the resin were toxic. Its own body was toxic waste! That and a super polluting 2 cycle motor spelled it's doom after reunification.

 

My old boss was in the navy around when Russia was still communist. He said due to the way the government was run quality control was not an important issue and you would find all kinds of quirky things in Russian engineering like screws with the divots in the head off centered

 

If you want a good laugh, read the story about Soviet aeronautical engineers reverse engineering a Boeing B-29 they 'interned' during the war, which became their Tupolev TU-4 bomber

 

It didn't start there. What do you think they did with the Me-262?

The last ones off the line had VW 1.1 liter 4-cycle 4-bangers installed. At that point, they should have kept going

 

is it not called Chaika?

 

Same thing we did--reverse-engineer it. But the way the Tupolev engineers took that B-29 apart, you'd think they were trying to reverse-engineer an Erector Set, but only knew how to deal with Tinker Toys and Lincoln Logs.

 

Might be a wagon. A family from Soviet Georgia, supposedly filmed in 1972