ZIS-112
Weird Car of the Day #516: 1951 ZIS-112 – Eye aye
Is there a term for seeing something and believing you know how to recreate or make it better. Ignorance? Guile? Talent?
Take the assertion — plausible, sure — that the ZIS-112 was Russia’s answer to the General Motors LeSabre concept car. I mean, in terms of putting a single headlight in the grille, yeah, they’re identical.
Weird cars are all about shades of grey.
Enabled by capitalism, surely, one of the best anecdotes I’ve read on the early General Motors concept cars is that Harley Earl would tootle show cars around as his daily drivers. The LeSabre, in 1951, mixing it with post-Second World War traffic is a fantastic visual.
It’s a visual, however, that best resonates within the culture that birthed it. Show cars state their intentions quite clearly on the tin. You’re invited to dream, knowing reality won’t measure up.
Russia had its propagandists, sure, but it lacked a singular Jam Handy.
Russian engineers clearly watched what American carmakers were doing from a technical perspective, and may have taken some inspiration, but the Russians were on a different track entirely—no vibes, no pizazz.
It was all about speed. The ZIS-112 is often classified as an experimental car, probably the most apt description. Designed and developed by the Zavod Imeni Stalina factory, ZIS for short, the 112 naturally evolved from the factory’s success in reverse-engineering Packards.
Once Stalin was gone, ZIS was renamed ZIL (Zavod imeni Likhachyova), and the factory kept making iconic Russian limousines until the 2010s.
Back to our experimental.
ZIS wasn’t known for cars—it started with trucks—so my educated guess is that, with second-hand knowledge of American designs, ZIS’ finest decided to see how far it could push the performance envelope of its vehicles.
In its ultimate form, the inline-8 engine was tuned to push this bulbous speed demon to 200 kph (125 mph). Where’d they get the idea to use a straight-8? Probably Packard, as the former American luxury car maker were stalwart believers in this configuration.
