Soviet Car Industry Museum

In the summer of 2014, the leadership of the RIAT group of companies decided to create a museum of Soviet cars. This decision was not spontaneous since the repair and manufacture of automotive equipment was the original purpose of the enterprise. The creation of the museum is an attempt to return to the roots, a tribute to the glorious past, which is so important in our impersonal age of globalization.

The history of the creation of the RIAT company began in those distant days, when the Ivanovo car repair plant was established on the basis of the car repair shops and on the orders of the People’s Commissar for Motor Vehicles of the RSFSR from July 1, 1941. During the period from 1941 to 1945, 3,769 GAZ-MM, GAZ-AA, and ZIS-5 vehicles were restored for the front.

In the difficult war years, the working team of Ivanovo car repairmen was formed from united, selfless, disciplined, hard-working people. At this time, the plant was engaged in the overhaul of the full cycle of such vehicles as the GAZ-51, GAZ-52, GAZ-53, and KAVZ buses.

Until the end of the 80s, the Ivanovo Car Repair Plant remained one of the main partners of GAZ. However, with the beginning of perestroika, the plant began to quickly lose orders, and market relations generally took production by surprise. IARZ was saved by the orders from the Zavolzhsky Motor Plant, which manufactured components for the GAZ plant.

And only with the arrival of Director Dmitry Borisovich Vlasov at the plant did a new life of the enterprise begin. In 1992, RIAT JSC was established under his leadership (repair and manufacture of motor vehicles) by transforming a rental company of the Ivanovo Experimental Car Repair Plant.

The shops and a service station were built, and a little later, a bakery on premises of the motor shop. During the years of perestroika, RIAT employees never had their wages delayed.

Today RIAT JSC is a multidisciplinary enterprise which implements itself in many industries. But the car was and remains RIAT’s greatest love. This love found expression in the creation of the Soviet Car Industry Museum, where cars from such legendary factories as GAZ, ZIL, ZIS, ZIM, VAZ are presented. All exhibits were kindly provided by private collectors. Some of them are modified and adapted to modern conditions (for example, the GAZ-21, which our president has in his garage). But there are also completely original samples affected by time (such as the military GAZ-67b). They, like a look into the past, give the museum visitors the opportunity to imagine what kind of tests the car went through.