Treasures from the East?
The history of car manufacturing in Eastern Europe is longer and richer than most of us realise.
To help alleviate this situation, we’re listing 30 passenger vehicles produced in that part of the world, some still familiar today and others largely forgotten.
For the avoidance of doubt, we’re defining Eastern European countries as those which lie either wholly or partly in Europe (Russia is in both) and which were at some time under the control of a Communist government, whether or not that was the case when the cars were being built.
In a further attempt to keep things manageable, we’re limiting ourselves to cars that could be bought before 1980.
These classic cars are presented in chronological order.
1. 1905 Laurin & Klement Voiturette A
The marque we now know as Škoda was founded by Mr Laurin and Mr Klement (both of whom had the first name Václav), and did not take on its current identity until it was taken over by the Škoda engineering company in 1925.
Laurin & Klement was established as a bicycle manufacturer, but had its first car running in 1905 and put it on sale the following year.
Manufactured in Mladá Boleslav (now part of the Czech Republic, and still the home of Škoda today), the Voiturette A was a small two-seater with a 1-litre, V-twin engine producing 7bhp.
Just 44 examples were built before Laurin & Klement turned its attention to much grander machines, such as the 4.9-litre straight-eight FF of 1907.
2. 1910 Audi Type A
Today’s Audi is without question a western European marque, but the original, not exactly related company of the same name was based in Zwickau, which subsequently became part of the Communist country called East Germany.
It was founded by August Horch, who created it after leaving an earlier company (that he also founded and we will come to later, called Horch) on bad terms with his former colleagues.
The first Audi, a high-class machine powered by a 2.6-litre, four-cylinder engine, was known, not unreasonably, as the Type A, and became available shortly after the new firm’s establishment in April 1910.
Audi was taken over by DKW in 1928, became part of the Auto Union in 1932 and lay dormant for two decades after the Second World War until the name was revived by Volkswagen.
3. 1911 Praga Mignon
Named after the Latin word for its home city of Prague, Praga started out building cars largely made of parts bought from other manufacturers.
The Mignon was its first completely self-designed model, introduced in 1911, revised in 1915, abandoned in 1917 and brought back in 1920.
Production then continued until 1924, by which time the car (as pictured here) had gone through considerable development.
During the Mignon’s lifetime, Prague itself went from being a major city in Austria-Hungary to the capital of Czechoslovakia, a country which existed from 1918 until its separation into Slovakia and the Czech Republic in 1992.
4. 1912 Russo-Balt 24-55
Yevgeny Yakovlev and Pyotr Freze built Russia’s first car in 1896, but Yakovlev’s early death in 1898 brought the project to a halt.
Russo-Balt – based in Riga, which was then part of the Russian Empire but is now the capital of Latvia – went a lot further, building several powerful and/or luxurious cars, along with trucks and aircraft, from 1909.
The 4.9-litre 24-55 is particularly notable, since Andrej Nagel and Vadim Mikhaylov took their example (pictured) to a respectable ninth place in the 1912 Rallye Monte-Carlo.
The original company did not survive beyond the 1920s, but a Russo-Balt concept called the Impression was displayed at the Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este in 2006, the Geneva motor show in 2007 and an industrial fair in Hanover in 2011.
5. 1923 Tatra 11
The company which was to become Tatra was founded in Kopřivnice (now part of the Czech Republic) in 1850 by Ignaz Schustala as a manufacturer of horse-drawn vehicles, and built its first car in 1897.
Despite this very early start, Tatra was not really ‘put on the map’, as motoring historian Michael Sedgwick later described it, until 1923, when it introduced the 11, largely the work of renowned Austrian designer Hans Ledwinka.
With a 1.1-litre, air-cooled, flat-twin engine under a bonnet shaped like that of early Renaults, the 11 was ‘rough, noisy and ugly’ according to Sedgwick, though he also wrote that it was ‘celebrated’ and ‘incredibly durable’.
The 11 was produced for only a few years, but the 12 which replaced it, and survived into the 1930s, was designed on very similar principles.
6. 1926 Magosix
The Magosix was the grandest car produced by MÁG, the Hungarian General Machine Factory.
Generally conventional, and bearing a strong resemblance to the contemporary Fiat 520, it had a six-cylinder engine and hydraulic brakes (neither of them common in cars built in Hungary), and was often used as a taxi.
MÁG was in serious financial trouble in the mid 1920s, and the Magosix seems to have been a final attempt to keep the company solvent.
It didn’t work; the formerly successful manufacturer folded shortly afterwards.
7. 1929 Weiss Manfréd
Named after one of its founders (also known as Manfréd Weiss, though in Hungarian the surname comes first), Weiss Manfréd was, for a while, one of Hungary’s largest industrial businesses.
Car manufacturing was a small part of its work, but it did produce a model with an 875cc, four-cylinder, two-stroke engine.
Remarkably, one example (pictured) actually led the 1929 Rallye Monte-Carlo, and finished second between a Graham-Paige and a Lancia Lambda.
The promotional potential of this result must have been enormous, but nothing much came of it, and the car came off the market in the early 1930s.
8. 1931 Walter Royal
Out of the question though this would certainly have been just a decade earlier or later, two Czech manufacturers built cars with V12 engines in the 1930s.
Tatra, which had clearly moved a long way from the little 11, fitted a 6-litre ‘twelve’ to its 80, while in Prague, a couple of hundred miles to the west, Walter developed a 5.7-litre unit for its Royal, just as magnificent as the 80 but reportedly slightly faster and a little cheaper.
Walter’s V12 was later taken out to 7.4 litres, but used in that form only in buses and fire engines.
Very few Royals were built (estimates range from three to 12), and Walter soon gave up designing its own cars and went down the easier route of building Fiats under licence.
9. 1933 Wikov 40
Wikov cars were produced by a company created by the 1918 merger of Wichterle and Kovařík, two previously separate agricultural engineering firms both based in Prostějov, a city in the eastern part of what is now the Czech Republic.
The operation was not particularly successful, though Wikov did score a minor hit with the 40, whose 1.9-litre engine was derived from the 1.7-litre unit used in the earlier 35.
The 40 performed well in the 1933 and 1934 editions of the 1000 Miles of Czechoslovakia race, winning its class in the latter year thanks partly to the skills of Wikov’s works driver, Adolf Szczyzycki.
Wikov withdrew from motorsport after that (bringing Szczyzycki’s fine racing career to an end and according to one source allowing ‘sports editors to breathe a sigh of relief’, after years of trying to spell his name correctly), and stopped building cars altogether shortly afterwards.
10. 1934 Tatra 77
If anyone tries to tell you that Eastern Europe has never been of any significance as far as motoring is concerned, feel free to point out that one of the most extraordinary cars introduced anywhere in the world in 1934 was designed and built in Czechoslovakia.
Having made a success of producing relatively conventional cars, Tatra embarked on a completely new path with the astonishingly aerodynamic 77, which made even the shocking Chrysler Airflow of the same year look almost ordinary.
Mounted at the rear (a location Tatra would favour into the 1990s) was an air-cooled, 3-litre V8 whose capacity was raised to 3.4 litres for the 77A.
Even in its smaller form, the engine could push the 77 along at a reputed 90mph, demonstrating the value of aerodynamic efficiency, but this was never going to be a popular car, and only around 250 examples of the two versions, combined, were built.
11. 1935 Praga Lady
The Lady was a replacement for an earlier Praga model called the Piccolo 307, and was quite conventional for the 1930s with a front-mounted, 1.7-litre, sidevalve engine driving the rear wheels.
In 1938, the year the car pictured here was built, Praga introduced several updates, but retained the original chassis.
Available mostly as a passenger car with various body styles, but also as a pick-up, an ambulance and a van, the Lady was produced until 1947.
Praga concentrated on commercial trucks for many years after that, but returned to the automobile industry in the 21st century as a manufacturer of sports and racing cars.
12. 1936 Aero Type 50
Like DKW, Prague-based Aero specialised in cars with two-stroke engines and front-wheel drive.
Its largest, and indeed last, model, was the Type 50, whose 2-litre engine produced 50bhp, later described as ‘creditable’ for the period.
A very small, probably single-figure number of Type 50s called Dynamik, one of which is pictured here, were fitted with extremely dramatic streamlined bodywork by the renowned Czech coachbuilder Sodomka.
13. 1937 DKW F7
The F7 was one in a long line of small, front-wheel-drive cars with two-stroke engines, all of them so successful that they made DKW the dominant player in the Auto Union empire, even though its models were at first sight far less impressive than those of Audi, Horch or Wanderer.
Production lasted for just a couple of years, but detail differences between the F7 and the preceding F5 or the F8 which followed it were minor.
DKW was the only Auto Union marque to resume production after the Second World War, Horch and Wanderer being abandoned entirely, and Audi not returning until the 1960s.
In September 1949, sensing what its future would be in a Communist country, Auto Union moved from Zwickau to Ingolstadt in the newly created West Germany, and no DKW built after that could be described as Eastern European.
14. 1937 Jawa Minor
Prague-based Jawa is best known for its motorcycles, but it dipped its toe in the automotive water in 1934 by building DKW F2s under licence.
The Minor introduced three years later was a Jawa design, but continuing DKW influence was evident in the twin-cylinder, two-stroke engine driving the front wheels.
During the Second World War, Jawa worked secretly on a new Minor based on similar principles, but after that the company decided to concentrate on two-wheelers, so the production version, on the market from 1946 to 1952, was manufactured instead by Aero.
15. 1937 Wanderer W23
Alphabetically the last of the four Saxon marques brought together in 1932 to form the Auto Union, Wanderer was the automotive brand name used by the Winklhofer and Jänicke company established in Chemnitz in the late 19th century to manufacture bicycles, later diversifying into cars and motorcycles.
The W23 was one of three Wanderers introduced in 1937 whose engines had the retrograde feature of side rather than overhead valves.
A 1.8-litre, four-cylinder unit was used in the W24, while the W23 shared its 2.6-litre ‘six’ with the longer-wheelbase W26.
These were the last models Wanderer ever produced, because civilian production came to an end in the early 1940s and did not resume when Auto Union was reformed after the war.
16. 1938 Horch 855
Like Wanderer, Horch (based, as Audi was at the time, in Zwickau) did not make it much past 1940, at least in its original form, but it did create a quite spectacular model shortly before closing.
The 855 was a magnificent and extremely rare roadster powered by the same 5-litre, straight-eight engine used in the 853, and based on a shortened version of that car’s chassis.
It has been described both as ‘murderously expensive’ and as ‘the only Horch capable of a genuine 90mph’, an even more powerful 6-litre V12 having been used only in a much heavier car.
The Gläser-bodied 855 pictured here is believed to be the only production model still in existence, along with a prototype.
17. 1939 Škoda Superb 4000
Škoda has been building cars called Superb consistently since 2001, but the name was first used in 1934 for what was to become a series of luxury models.
Nearly all of them had straight-six engines, but right at the end of the decade Škoda built a small number of versions called 4000, which were powered by a 4-litre V8.
As might be imagined, this was the largest and most powerful of all 1930s Škoda engines, with an output of close to 100bhp.
Very few people had the chance to experience it, since only around 10 examples of the 4000 are understood to have been built before the world went to war with itself.
18. 1946 Moskvitch 400
Moskvitch is the Russian equivalent of the English word ‘Muscovite’, meaning ‘of Moscow’, which is indeed where the company has always had its headquarters.
The 400, its first post-war model, bore a strong resemblance to the contemporary Opel Kadett, and had a similarly sized, 1.1-litre engine.
Available with various body styles, the 400 was upgraded in the 1950s to become the 401, which was soon replaced by the very different 402.
19. 1951 FSO Warszawa
FSO’s first car, named after the company’s home city of Warsaw, was really a product of two Eastern European countries, since it was the Polish equivalent of the Russian GAZ-M20 Pobeda.
GAZ had been building it for several years when FSO came on board, and stopped doing so in the 1950s, but FSO kept going for a long time after that.
The Warszawa was still around as late as 1973, by which time it must have seemed extremely out-of-date to some observers, though in fact there had been several changes including a switch from a sidevalve to an overhead-valve engine.
Among other variants, there were several commercial versions, and Ghia was commissioned to create an attractive saloon body which, perhaps unfortunately, did not get past the design-study stage.
20. 1957 GAZ Volga
The replacement for the M20 Pobeda, officially known as the GAZ-21, was the first of many cars also named after the Volga river which flows through GAZ’s home city of Nizhny Novgorod, or Gorky as it was known from 1932 to 1990.
The 21 was a saloon and there was also a 22 estate, plus a very rare 23 with a 5.5-litre V8 rather than the normal 2.5-litre ‘four’.
Full-scale production began in April 1957 and ended, after several updates, in 1970, by which time 638,875 examples had been built (according to GAZ itself, though other estimates have been published).
A Volga which left the factory in July 1967 was the one millionth GAZ passenger car, total vehicle production including trucks having reached five million in February of that year.
21. 1959 Škoda Octavia
Octavia is the Latin word for ‘eighth’, and Škoda used it in 1959 for the eighth model it had introduced since the end of the Second World War, and the eighth since 1933 with all-round independent suspension.
The new car was available both as a saloon and a Combi (estate), and was powered by small, front-mounted, four-cylinder engines with capacities of either 1.1 or 1.2 litres.
The saloon was replaced in 1964 by the 1000MB, the first in a long line of rear-engined Škodas.
The engine location made it impossible to design an estate version of the 1000MB, so the Octavia Combi remained in production until 1971.
22. 1964 Trabant 601
All Trabants were manufactured by – or, if you like, can be blamed on – the Sachsenring company of Zwickau.
The 601 was by far the longest-lived model, but like nearly all the others it had a twin-cylinder, two-stroke engine, a reasonable enough choice when the P50 was introduced in 1959, but one of many sources of criticism by the time the 601 was finally discontinued in 1990.
The two-stroke was replaced by a conventional, 1.1-litre Volkswagen unit, but by the time that happened the former East and West Germanies had become a single country once more, and there was no longer a reason for Trabants of any kind to exist.
Although the 601 changed only in detail over 26 years, it went from being reasonably relevant at the start to utterly reviled by the end, and then to being treated with nostalgic affection when it became a thing of the past.
23. 1966 Wartburg 353
The first Wartburg was built in Eisenach (later to become part of East Germany) in 1898, but the model best known in the west was the 353, sold in several countries as the Knight.
Usually powered by a three-cylinder, two-stroke engine, it was introduced in 1966 and significantly updated nine years later, though its outward appearance hardly changed at all.
Like the Trabant 601, the 353 was given a four-stroke Volkswagen engine near the end of its life, but the reunification of Germany meant that people who might otherwise have bought it now had access to far more modern cars instead.
Sold as a saloon, an estate or a pick-up truck, the 353 was also moderately successful in competition, finishing (not in last place) in the Finnish round of the World Rally Championship as late as 1993.
24. 1967 Moskvitch 412
The Moskvitch 412 looked very similar to the facelifted version of the older 408, but had a more powerful, 1.5-litre engine.
It was exported to western countries, where it was regarded as being some way short of a dynamic masterpiece, but was at least appreciated for offering quite a lot of power for not much money.
This worked greatly to its advantage in British Production Saloon racing, whose class structure in the early 1970s was determined not by engine capacity but by price, leading to enormous success for the Russian car.
25. 1969 ARO 24
The 24 was produced by a company whose name is short for ‘Auto Romania’, and which continued building the vehicle until its demise in 2006.
It came in several forms, including a pick-up truck and what we would now call an SUV, and engines were often supplied by foreign manufacturers.
The significantly smaller ARO 10 launched in 1980 was sold in the UK as the Dacia Duster, though it had no relation to the current model of the same name.
26. 1969 Dacia 1300
Dacia is now wholly owned by Renault, and was founded in the late 1960s to build Renaults under licence in Romania.
Its first model, the 1100, was the local version of the Renault 8, but it was produced for only a few years, in sharp contrast to the 12-based 1300.
With several updates and occasional changes of name, this car lasted all the way through to 2004 as a saloon, while the pick-up derivative survived until 2006, more than two decades after the Renault it was based on had been discontinued.
27. 1969 Melkus RS 1000
Heinz Melkus was a successful racing driver and founder of a car company based in Dresden.
Nearly all the Melkus models were designed specifically for motorsport, with the single exception of the attractive little gullwing-doored RS 1000.
At the time, Dresden was in East Germany, and faced with the difficulty of importing engines from the west Melkus instead came to a deal with Wartburg to use its three-cylinder two-stroke, which was suitably modified for its new purpose.
In all, 101 RS 1000s are believed to have been built before 1980, followed by 15 more in 2006.
28. 1970 VAZ-2101
The 2101 was the first car produced by VAZ, an acronym for a term which translates from Russian as Volga Automotive Plant.
In most respects, it was a Fiat 124 (runaway winner of the Car of the Year award three years earlier), but VAZ adapted it to suit the poor road conditions of its home and neighbouring countries.
Available as a saloon and an estate, the latter being named VAZ-2102, the car was sold in western Europe as the Lada 1200, 1300 or 1500, after the capacities of the available engines.
Very popular in and around Russia, and appreciated for its low cost elsewhere, the Lada outlasted the Fiat it was based on by a long time, remaining in production until 1988.
29. 1975 Škoda 130 RS
The Škoda 130 RS is the only car in this list developed specifically as a homologation special.
Part of the Škoda 100 range introduced in 1969, it had a rear-mounted, 1.3-litre engine which produced 111bhp in standard form and up to 140bhp when modified.
Overall event victories were out of the question, but the 130 RS did exceptionally well in its class in international racing and rallying, earning Škoda the manufacturers’ title in the 1981 European Touring Car Championship.
While other figures have been quoted, Škoda itself says that ‘nearly 200 units of the 130 RS were produced, with dozens more built privately using factory-supplied components’.
30. 1977 Lada Niva
While the 2101 was a Fiat 124 adapted for local conditions, as discussed earlier, the Niva was the first model designed from scratch by VAZ.
A compact SUV in modern terms, the Niva had four-wheel drive, and while it was undoubtedly basic by western standards it has been spoken of highly by off-road experts.
Almost incredibly, it is still being built at the time of writing, nearly half a century after it first appeared, and is marketed as the Niva Legend.
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