GAZ
manufacturer of commercial vehicles
GAZ (Gorkovsky avtomobilny zavod, Russian: ГАЗ, Го́рьковский автомоби́льный заво́д, lit. 'Gorky Automobile Plant') is a Russian automobile manufacturer based in Nizhny Novgorod, a city known as Gorky from 1932 to 1990. Established in 1932 as the Nizhny Novgorod Automobile Plant with technical assistance from the Ford Motor Company, it adopted the name GAZ in 1933 when the city was renamed Gorky. It has produced passenger cars, trucks, buses, military vehicles, armored vehicles, and light commercial vehicles.
In the post-Soviet period (from 1991), GAZ shifted its focus toward light commercial vehicles and entered into contract manufacturing agreements with the companies Volkswagen, General Motors, and Mercedes-Benz.
History
Early history
In May 1929 the Soviet Union signed an agreement with the American Ford Motor Company. Under its terms, the Soviets agreed to purchase $13 million worth of automobiles and parts, while Ford agreed to give technical assistance until 1938 to construct an integrated automobile-manufacturing plant at Nizhny Novgorod. The factory was founded and production started on 1 January 1932. At the time the factory was known as Nizhny Novgorod Automobile Plant, short NAZ (Nizhegorodskiy avtomobilny zavod), full name Nizhny Novgorod Automobile Plant named after V. M. Molotov (Nizhegorodskiy avtomobilny zavod imeni V. M. Molotova), after the Soviet minister Vyacheslav Molotov. In 1932 the plant produced its first automobiles, GAZ-AA (originally known as NAZ-AA, as they were manufactured before Nizhny Novgorod became Gorky) truck and GAZ-A passenger car (manufactured after Nizhny Novgorod became Gorky). The cars were based on the Ford Model AA and Ford Model A, respectively.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “GAZ” is manufacturer of commercial vehicles. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through manufacturer, commercial and vehicles, not as a finished interpretation.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q28616. VIAF identifies the subject as 131057830. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1932, 1990, 1933 and 1991.
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This entry incorporates text from “GAZ” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.