Vintage Thing No.31 - UAZ-452

It was on the last day of a practice expedition for my Duke of Edinburgh award. I'd been out on Dartmoor for four days camping with my school friends when we began to make our way into Princetown. There was a tremendous sense of returning to civilisation. We'd been camping out in tents and had carried everything with us. At one stage something big came for our rubbish bag tucked under the flysheet of our tent and Hoppy Hopwood swore blind it was an ocelot. The Beast of Bodmin Moor was in the news even then - except this was Dartmoor. We probably smelt a bit and were a little foot sore but the sense of camaraderie was great. We'd not heard any radio let alone any TV, which was rare for a bunch of teenage boys, so felt completely cut off from the news and world events. 

This is what I saw in Princetown in the late 70s - a Russian-built UAZ 4x4 truck (Photo Olyslager Organisation)

As we tramped across the moors, we began to catch glimpses of little 4x4 pick up trucks bouncing over the moors. This was nothing special and my friends didn't give them a passing thought. But I did. I knew straight away that they weren't just foreign but Russian and this was at the height of the Cold War. What could have happened while we'd been away in the wilderness, at one with nature and escaped exotic pets gone native?

I was at the age between Airfix kits and the real thing. I knew these little trucks were Russian because I had recently acquired The Observer's Military Vehicle Directory. It had been specially ordered for me by my mother from the SPCK Bookshop in Truro - that's Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge. I don't think they stocked The Observer's Military Vehicle Directory as a matter of course but were quite happy to order it for me.

By the time my D of E expedition reached Princetown I was convinced we'd been invaded. It turned out that we had but peacefully. An enterprising soul had begun to import these 0.8ton 4x4s and they'd instantly found favour with moorland farmers since they were so much cheaper than Land Rovers. Some said they performed better, too. In fact as a cross between a Land-Rover and a Ford Transit, there was nothing else like them.

This is an early ambulance version, the UAZ-450A

From my copy of The Observer's Military Vehicle Directory, I gleaned that they were introduced in 1966 and by the time I made their acquaintance featured 2430cc 4-cylinder engines with an 88mm x 100mm bore and stroke producing 70 bhp. These engines originated in the GAZ scout cars - the USSR's equivalent of a Jeep - and UAZ-450s, with the simpler grille design shown here, made do with a 2120cc (82x100) engine and 55 bhp. They all had three or four speed gearboxes with two speed transfer boxes. Later versions featured yet more powerful engines and UAZ-452s remained in production at the Ulyanovsky Avtomobilny Zavod plant at Ulyanovsk right up until 2004-5.

These little vans were also available without four wheel drive but that's what gave them their appeal.

The wagons I saw on Dartmoor on that expedition in 1979 or 1980 were all pick ups but my favourite versions were the minibuses and vans. The UAZ-452 offered 4x4 traction at a budget price when 4x4s of any kind were still rare, quite unlike today. And the combination of Transit size carrying capacity and budget but effective four wheel drive was unique back then. The UAZ-452 could have been a kind of cult Russian microbus but factory photos show wandering shut lines and a kind of pre-dented build quality that VW Microbus owners would rarely have nightmares about. This didn't matter to the Dartmoor farmer, though. These were rough tough little trucks that must have been regarded as expendable by the Russian Army and probably didn't last long in Dartmoor's wet climate.

So do any survive in the UK? The UAZ-452 was a passing craze and I only ever saw them on that occasion in the late seventies (1979?), although at the time they seemed to be everywhere. Are there any microbus versions tucked up in old barns still? I'd love to see a UAZ-452 van at next year's Run To The Sun. It would be nice to think some still exist but frankly I doubt it. Wouldn't getting spares be a problem?