Comments by "Sar Jim" (@sarjim4381) on "A Unique Soviet Car 1957 Volga GAZ M-21 With Automatic Transmission! #sovietcars" video.

  1. Not hard to see all the Frod styling cue in the Volga. Head on, it's a near duplicate of a '53 Ford Mainliner. The rear styling seems to a lot more Soviet, although there are touches of early 50's Plymouths there. The problem with the automatic was it was a hydromechanical unit. The hydraulic assist was needed during the long and bitter cold winters if the bands weren't to just freeze in place. Soviet planners also didn't take into account the need for high quality transmission fluid, something unavailable at the time. It took almost three years of testing and manufacturing set up before the fluid could be produced n quantity. Because of that, a car that was supposed to have the transmission fluid changed every 1000 kilometers drove 20,000 or 30,000 kilometers still using the inferior original factory transmission fluid. This contributed greatly to the reputation of unreliability of the transmission. There was nothing wrong with the design of the transmission, but Soviet industry at the time didn't have the machine tools to produce such a close tolerance unit on a mass production scale. It required a lot of hand fitting, and Volgas would sit on the line for weeks waiting for their transmissions. Productivity at the Volga plants was also very slow, with a production rate of about five cars per Day. There was no concept in the socialist economy for incentive payments for workers that were fast workers, so work settled down to a tepid pace, with as much time spent around the samovar chatting with one another as there was car construction. The Soviets hoped the Star could be a foreign exchange earner in the export market, but too many quirky features needed in a car traveling on what the time were atrocious road conditions of the country demanded truck side leaf springs on all four corners, huge drum brakes instead of using disks, a center kingpin with recirculating ball steering that could survive hits from all the potholes in the roads but also required the arms of weightlifter to park, and even a 300 pound steel weight under the trunk floor to help with snow traction. The included radio had wave bands only used in the Soviet Union. The car was literally built more like an army truck than a passenger car, and it rode like one. It weighed in at over 5,000 pounds, was painfully slow because of the low compression ratio demanded by poor quality Soviet gasoline, and only had a 65 HP inline four. The V-8 was reserved for NKVD cars used as escorts for official VIP convoys, a common sight in those days. Needless to say, the dreams of export success were dashed.
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