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| Not such a welcome sight as an ambulance for any refusenik, this police van has made it to Blighty (Photo: Sam Glover) |
I've just heard from Sam Glover of Practical Classic magazine. Not only did he used to own two UAZ-452s, but he has personal experience of them in Mongolia. He had this ambulance and the brown pickup. Both of them are RHD and he says the conversion from LHD was done over here and was somewhat crudely executed. They were imported around 1979-1980, which corresponds with the time I was doing my Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme expedition and wondering why Russian 4x4s were suddenly everywhere. (What did you do in the Cold War, Daddy? I went camping.)
"Off-hand, I can't really remember the story of the UK importer," said Sam. "I seem to remember our archivist - one-man library Tony Turner - spinning me the full yarn in a pub, but unfortunately it was towards the end of a salubrious evening. I keep intending to button-hole him on the subject again and make notes."
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| Note the British registration (Photo Sam Glover) |
Sam also knows of two others but it's more than likely that one will be cannibalised so that the other can live on, or as The Spice Girls might have it, Two Become One. Sam's currently fuelling his passion for COMECON exotica with a Barkas minibus, which has a DKW-style 3 cylinder two-stroke engine (see VT No.13), and a Volga estate car. Volgas share the same engine with UAZ-452s and, in that curious manner achieved by so many Russian cars, looks like it could have been styled in Detroit.
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| U for Ubiquitous (Photo Sam Glover) |
Good points of the UAZ-452 were mechanical durability and simplicity, amazing off-roading ability and cheapness. By far the worst feature was the build quality. This is even worse nowadays than back when Sam's examples were built as the tooling for the body panels has worn out, not that something so trivial as doors and floorpans not fitting would ever stop Ulyanovsk Avtomobilnyi Zavod from continuing production. And also, in that inimitable Russian fashion, Gorki Avtomobilnyi Zavod.
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| A tyre's not worn out until you can see the air in it (Photo Sam Glover) |
"Parts can be bought from any roadside shop in rural Russia," Sam tells me, "and are largely shared with other GAZ models - so German eBay is the best bet for UK owners. They couldn't be easier to work on - everything is chunky, easily accessed and very simple." A Practical Classic indeed.
UAZ and GAZ are pretty well interchangeable titles. There aren't brands or marques like we have in the west, just the initials of the factory where these things were built. When GAZ in Gorky was threatened by the invading Germany army in 1941, Stalin had it moved further west to Ulyanovsk. When production of the GAZ-69 off-roader was begun in Ulyanovsk, it became the UAZ-69 and its vital organs were inherited by not only the UAZ-452 commercila vehicle range but also the Volga passenger car.
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| What's the betting it looks zactly the same in the other direction? (Photo Sam Glover) |
Sam says there are no other four wheeled vehicles in Mongolia. He took part in an overland trip through the region and got to know the UAZ-452's strengths and weaknesses well. "We hired the cow-pat green specimen near the Russian/Mongolian border, and it got us to Ulaan Bataar in three days. It cruised quite happily at 50mph and would go faster if hustled."
So my curiosity about this little 4x4 van is almost sated. All I need to do now is re-acquaint myself with one, not so much in the flesh but in the paint.
Probably not very well applied paint.
The final word goes to Sam. "If you fancy a UAZ, you can still pick up a new one in Nizhny Novgorod for around £5k. The build quality is now hilariously bad."
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