The Soviet four-wheel drive passenger car with an open body GAZ-67 did not become the most massive military vehicle of the Great Patriotic War, but it is rightfully considered one of its brightest symbols. It is also important that the GAZ-67 became one of the first domestic "jeeps", although the concept of an all-wheel drive passenger car in the USSR had already been worked out even before the war. In total, until 1953, 92,843 cars of this type were assembled in the Soviet Union, but only 4851 of them fell on the war years.
In the Red Army, these cars were affectionately called "goat", "pygmy", "flea warrior" or "Ivan-Willis" and HBV (I want to be "Willis"). During the war, the Soviet jeep was actively used as a staff and reconnaissance vehicle. In addition, the GAZ-67B could be used to transport infantry, evacuate the wounded from the battlefield, and also as an artillery tractor for transporting light weapons and mortars. In terms of its chassis, this SUV was unified with the BA-64 armored car, which was produced during the Great Patriotic War.
Pre-war developments
A few years before the appearance of the GAZ-67 SUV in the USSR, there were already machines that would have a fairly large impact on its design and creation. In the summer of 1936, the first prototypes of the GAZ-M1 ("emki") car were assembled at the Gorky Automobile Plant. The all-wheel drive version of this car, designed under the guidance of designer V. A. Grachev, was designated as GAZ-61-40. The car was an open version of the "emka" (GAZ-11-40), which received a four-speed gearbox instead of a three-speed gearbox. From the transfer case located behind it, propeller shafts went to the front and rear drive axles. In this case, the drive to the front driving axle could be turned off.
GAZ-61-40
The design of the front drive axle for the new car became quite a difficult task. Since its wheels were also steerable, they had to be connected to the axle shafts using cardan joints, and such joints that, at large angles of rotation of the wheels (35-40 degrees), would not create harmful jerks and vibrations. The most optimal solution for a passenger car with dependent wheel suspension has become a ball joint of constant angular velocities, known as a hinge of the "Rceppa" type. Nowadays, it is widely used in the front drive axles of off-road vehicles, but in those years it was considered a novelty.
The GAZ-61-40 car was distinguished by very good cross-country ability on dirt roads and rough terrain, it moved well along swampy, snow-covered and sandy areas, and could climb hills with a steepness of up to 43 °. The advantages of a passenger car were obvious, so in 1941 the Gorky Automobile Plant began the serial production of this car. True, on the production models, which were assigned the GAZ-61 index, not an open body was installed, but a closed sedan type - exactly the same as on the six-cylinder "emka" GAZ-11-73. The engines of these two cars were identical. At the very beginning of the Great Patriotic War, all-wheel drive cars GAZ-61 were used by famous Soviet commanders - G. K. Zhukov, I. S. Konev, K. E. Voroshilov and others.
GAZ-61
With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, the production of emoks, and, therefore, bodies for them at GAZ had to be stopped. In the first months of the war, GAZ-61-415 pickups, which had a canvas cab, were still going to the front. They were used as liaison and command vehicles, as well as for towing light anti-tank guns. The need for cars of this type at the front was really huge, so in the summer of 1941, V. A. 64. Actually, only the front suspension, body and radiator were completely new in this car, otherwise it was completed from units and parts of previous cars produced under the GAZ brand.
The birth of a legend
The need to create a lightweight and maximum passable car manifested itself back in the years of the Soviet-Finnish war of 1939-1940. This became especially evident during the conduct of hostilities in winter off-road conditions. Mainly, the car was supposed to meet the interests of serving the middle command staff of the Red Army.
A similar need in those years was experienced by the military in other countries. In general, the concept of a light, simple, four-wheel drive passenger car is attributed to the Americans. True, the all-wheel drive scheme (albeit with overseas features) by the end of the 1930s was already well developed at GAZ - on passenger cars. And direct copying in Gorky was out of the question. Old-timers of the enterprise recalled that the American "Bantam", which was the ideological ancestor of the famous "Willis", they saw only in magazine photographs. At the same time, the awareness of the industry leadership about this American car went only to the detriment of the first version of the Gorky "jeep". It was said that it was the People's Commissar of Medium Machine Building (in those years that the automotive industry was subordinate to him) who insisted on a narrow track, like that of an American car, although GAZ had standard, wider bridges.
The task to develop a light army vehicle was issued by the Main Armored Directorate of the Red Army at the end of the winter of 1941, and already on March 25, 1941, the GAZ-R1 (R - reconnaissance) vehicle was put out for testing. In August of the same year, when parts of the Red Army were already fighting the Wehrmacht near Smolensk, in Gorky they began mass production of an all-wheel drive vehicle, designated GAZ-64. The production of an SUV, however, was just scanty - less than 700 of these cars were assembled at GAZ in 1, 5 years. Before the outbreak of World War II, many countries, including the United States, Germany, Great Britain and Italy, had already started producing such machines. Later, by the name, or rather the nickname, one of the most common models of this type - Ford GP (built according to the drawings of the Willis plant), such cars will be called "jeeps". In this aspect, the GAZ-64, which was launched in the fall of 1941, became the first Soviet "jeep".
The GAZ-64 was improved at the end of 1942: the track of both driving axles was expanded to 1466 mm, while instead of semicircular cutouts in the body above the wheels, wings appeared, since the track became larger, and the width of the body remained unchanged. This innovation was explained quite simply - that the "wilis", that the GAZ-64, which had a narrow (1250 mm) track, when driving on slopes and turns had a tendency to overturn. The widening of the vehicle track helped to eliminate this deficiency. The improved car received a new index GAZ-67, and after further modernization was carried out in 1944, the car was renamed GAZ-67B. In this last version, the SUV was then widely used in our country. The car was distinguished by a fairly high ground clearance (227 mm), favorable weight distribution along the axles, wide tires with developed lugs, small body overhangs in the front and rear. Together, all these features significantly increased the already good cross-country ability of the GAZ-67B, added traction to the car. The car could safely tow a trailer weighing 800-1000 kilograms, confidently moved along broken front roads without overheating the engine (it had a radiator with six rows of cooling pipes instead of three, as it was on the famous "lorry"), for a long time it could move at the speed of a pedestrian, accelerating on a good flat road to 90 km / h. With a relatively heavy 76, 2-mm ZIS-3 cannon on a trailer, the car worked with an overload, but even then its speed on the highway was more than 58 km / h.
The GAZ-67B was a military vehicle that was created for war and in the harsh conditions of wartime. When developing, Soviet designers did not particularly think about the comfort of the machine, focusing on simplicity of design and a high level of reliability. The driver, in addition to the rather tight pedals, which were designed for soldiers' boots, were offered only a small dashboard on which the minimum required set of instruments was located. Of the so-called luxury goods, which today would be called additional options, the Soviet jeep could boast only a socket for connecting a special lamp, as well as two fuel tanks. One tank was located directly under the windshield of the car, and the second under the driver's seat. And all this with a relatively small overall dimensions of the car, which had room for four people.
Like most of the products that at that time were produced by the Gorky Automobile Plant, the all-wheel drive GAZ-67B was equipped with an ordinary 4-cylinder carburetor engine. The engine displacement was 3.3 liters, it was capable of developing 50-54 horsepower. At the same time, the engine of the Soviet jeep, the spare parts of which were in common with its relative GAZ-MM, favorably distinguished itself by its high torque and low speed. These qualities were its main advantages, while the torque was equal to 180 Nm, it could be achieved only at 1400 rpm. The average fuel consumption of the car was about 15 l / 100 km, while when accelerating to 70 km / h or more, fuel consumption increased by about 25%.
An all-wheel drive transmission with the additional ability to connect the front axle was installed on the GAZ-67B car. The traction characteristics of the jeep were such that the engineers took both the gearbox and the clutch from the GAZ-MM car, almost without additional changes. The disadvantage of the running equipment of this army jeep was the absence of an interaxle differential, for this reason, all-wheel drive on a car was used only when driving through mud or overcoming snow-covered areas. It is worth noting that movement in liquid mud did not pose any problems for the GAZ-67B, even when the wheels of the car were completely hidden in a rut.
The strength and weakness of this SUV was the maximum unification with other production cars of GAZ, while the American "Willis" was designed from scratch. At the same time, the Soviet jeep was designed and prepared for mass production in an incredibly short time. The car was as simple as an all-wheel drive design could be, and was suitable for manual repair even by low-skilled locksmiths. And the power plant with a compression ratio of 4, 6 was capable, unlike American engines, to eat even the fuel that was ashamed to be called gasoline. The famous "Willis-MV" compression ratio, by the way, was 6, 48. The fact that the Soviet jeep was quietly working on non-scarce grades of gasoline and oil was a significant advantage of the GAZ-67 over its overseas competitor. For him, fuel with an octane rating of 64 and even 60 was quite enough, while the Jeep could only run on high-quality gasoline, the octane rating of which was at least 70.
A kind of hallmark of the GAZ-67 car was its four-spoke steering wheel with a bent wooden rim with a diameter of 385 mm, it was forced to be mastered in production just a day after the factory - the supplier of carbolite parts went out of order (it was burned during the bombing) … Despite its archaic and unsightly appearance, this steering wheel took root and even fell in love with Soviet drivers for the ability to work without gloves, especially in cold weather. They were not even in a hurry to change it on occasion for a plastic steering wheel. And another, already a three-spoke plastic steering wheel with a diameter of 425 mm, which was specially created for the GAZ-67B car, turned out to be such a successful solution that suited everyone, which became the standard for post-war trucks of the Gorky Automobile Plant for many years.
Modernized in 1944, the car received the GAZ-67B index, the car received a transmission and a front axle reinforced in a number of units. Angular contact ball bearings of the front axle pivots, which were inherited from the GAZ-61 car, had a very low service life (5-8 thousand kilometers). In November 1944, they were replaced with plain bearings of the White type, which provided a more durable, repairable and shock-resistant solution. In addition, these bearings were not so sensitive to contamination due to the unreliable sealing of the spheres of the ball joints. After the replacement, there were no more complaints about operation on this unit of the car. A similar technical solution to the pivot supports turned out to be so successful that it was subsequently used for a long time on other light all-terrain vehicles of the Gorky Automobile Plant: GAZ-69, GAZ-62, GAZ-M72 and GAZ-M73. Also, on October 23, 1944, instead of the "Emovsky" IM-91, a more advanced distributor of the R-15 type was supplied to the engine, which was maximally unified with the R-12 distributor of the 6-cylinder GAZ-11 engine. Connected to the spark plugs using insulated high-voltage wires (instead of copper plates), the new distributor ensured the maintenance of its stable regulation, as well as the best indicators of dust and moisture resistance of electrical connections with the possibility of shielding them from radio interference.
The GAZ-67B became truly massive in the post-war years. Gaziks worked actively in cities and collective farms throughout the country, served as geologists, and continued to serve in the army and police. At the same time, they were driven by the same courageous and stern drivers as in the war years, squinting from the dust in the summer months, and making homemade booths on top of the bodies in the winter, which were supposed to somehow save from the harsh Russian frosts. Gradually, cars were written off and sold to private owners. In the skillful hands of Soviet drivers and, of course, with the installation of later parts and assemblies, these cars served them faithfully for decades.
Technical characteristics of GAZ-67B:
Overall dimensions: 3350x1685x1700 mm (with awning).
The wheelbase is 2100 mm.
Ground clearance - 227 mm (with tires 6, 50 - 16).
The smallest turning radius is 6.5 m (along the track of the front outer wheel).
Curb weight - 1320 kg, full - 1720 kg.
Carrying capacity - 400 kg or 4 people + 100 kg.
The power plant is a GAZ-64-6004 with a capacity of 54 hp.
Fuel consumption - 15 l / 100 km
The maximum speed is 90 km / h.
The power reserve is 465 km.
