'FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE!'

[Mr. Linsky]

Pictured are a number of 'Russian made' old look! (that's right, I said Russian!).

These are of the 'ZIS' series that were manufactured between 1947 and 1950 in a factory named ZIS for comrade Stalin!

1164 34 seaters were built and equipped with 4 cylinder Diesel Electric power plants equivalent to a DD 4-71.

I don't know why they went to all this trouble when all they had to do was order them from GM!

The story goes that hundreds of genuine GM Old Looks were left all over Europe at the end of World War II (I guess it didn't pay to bring them back home) and the Russians got hold of couple and liked them so much that they copied them.

They were good at copying as can also be seen below in the form of their versions of Cadillacs and Packards.

Photos borrowed for educational purposes only.

Mr. Linsky - Green Bus Lines, Inc., Jamaica, NY

[Mike]

Pictured are a number of 'Russian made' old look! (that's right, I said Russian!).

These are of the 'ZIS' series that were manufactured between 1947 and 1950 in a factory named ZIS for comrade Stalin!

1164 34 seaters were built and equipped with 4 cylinder Diesel Electric power plants equivalent to a DD 4-71.

I don't know why they went to all this trouble when all they had to do was order them from GM!

Russians also made trolleybuses and streetcars based on this design. They couldn't order from GM because of a little difference in idealogy.

[tomsbuspage]

BUMP!

I found some videos on Youtube from a few years ago in which Russian video blogger and car enthusiast Ivan Zenkevich test drives the license-built Soviet copies of the GM "Old Look" buses.  First up is the ZiS-154 rear-engined diesel-electric bus, which evolved into the mechanically-simpler ZiS-155 front-engined motor bus, which inspired the MTB-82 trolleybus, which in turn inspired the MTV-82 tramway.  I wish these videos had subtitles because я не говорю по-русски!