This veteran truck is reminiscent of other now-forgotten cars – rough, but without deceit. Honest, real.
A paradoxical feeling: it’s time to get tired of heavy pedals and a steering wheel without an amplifier, the roar of an engine competing in loudness with the howl of a transmission. And the brakes are not God knows what. You don’t want to part with your car!
The ease of storming half-meter snowdrifts causes some kind of boyish excitement. But it’s not only that, but in an amazing understanding with the machine.
Same but better
The first serial four-wheel drive truck in Gorky got on the conveyor in 1948 – two years after the launch of the base GAZ‑51 and just three years after the war. True, the first estimates for such a machine in Gorky were made back in 1939. But the Great Patriotic War prevented the work, and in 1943 they took up the already fairly redesigned car.
The main thing that made it possible to put the SUV on the conveyor as quickly as possible was the maximum unification of the all-wheel drive car with the base one. This is what helped to create an extremely simple, inexpensive, but, as they would say now, an effective car.
The frame of an all-wheel drive truck with a base of 3300 mm almost repeated the element of the base GAZ‑51. There was enough strength, only a cross member was added at the place where the transfer case was attached. The power units on mono- and all-wheel drive GAZ trucks are the same.
The lower-valve six-cylinder engine with a working volume of 3.5 liters (82 × 110 mm) with a compression ratio of 6.2 developed 70 hp. With. at 2800 rpm. At the heart of this unit is the Dodge design of the second half of the 30s. And the gearbox is a four-speed, spur, without synchronizers. Rear axle GAZ‑63 almost repeats the bridge of the 51st. Only the main gear for the GAZ‑51 is 6.67, and for the all-wheel drive vehicle it is 7.6. Absolutely original and does not copy any Western sample transfer case with low gear 1.96.
In the contours of the cab, looking closer, it is easy to recognize the features of the famous Lend-Lease truck Studebaker US6. The prototypes of 1943 were equipped with an American cabin, which became a model for the Soviet one. But thanks to heavily modified fenders with built-in large headlights, the Gorky truck ended up looking fresh and original.
He still looks good today, by the way. In many ways, precisely because it does not show off: the content is in harmony with the form. It happens … Although less and less.
FOUR TO FOUR
GAZ-63 was produced in 1948-1968 with a 3.5-liter engine with a capacity of 70 hp. with., a four-speed gearbox and a razdatka with a reduction gear. The drive to the front axle is connected.
In addition to the base car, GAZ‑63A with a winch and GAZ‑63D truck tractors with dual rear wheels and GAZ‑63P with single wheels were mass-produced. They also made export chassis, including those in the southern version, and chassis for special vehicles.
Iron Small
The passport data of the GAZ‑63 by the standards of the turn of the 40s and 50s are quite worthy. Now, however, they evoke rather an ironic smile. Carrying capacity, depending on the quality of the road surface, is 1500-2000 kg with a curb weight of 3280 kg. Not bad for an all-wheel drive car.
But the passport maximum speed of 65 km / h is still flattery. The steady cruising speed of a truck is 40–50 kilometers per hour. He doesn’t want to go faster. You can believe in the consumption of 25 liters of gasoline per 100 km. But precisely at a uniform speed on a decent road.
But the brakes are hydraulic. True, without an amplifier, and on each wheel – only one cylinder. But anyway! Thanks to the oven. On the earliest machines, by the way, it was not. And it’s pretty warm here. Although it blows only on the glass, but in such a way that the heat comes down.
Of course, driving a GAZ‑63 on the highway is now quite dreary. Including for neighbors on the move. Even in the mid-60s, the dynamics of a 70-horsepower all-wheel drive car against the background of, say, the 75-horsepower Volga GAZ-21, the 50-horsepower Moskvich-408 or the 150-horsepower ZIL-130, to put it mildly, was not impressive.
But GAZ‑63 is “about something else”. In 1965, when a car was released, with which we already seem to have found a common language, the main musical hit of the year in the USSR was the first Soviet twist “The Best City of the Earth” performed by Muslim Magomayev. But for the GAZ-63, the bravura march “We are walking” to the verses of Yevgeny Yevtushenko from the painting “Dima Gorin’s Career”, popular in those years, is better suited, the heroes of which cut down the taiga and pull a high-voltage line along the glades. This truck – there! Get off the pavement, into the pampas!
Continued on the next page.
