On our way to lunch in Newton Centre today, J and I were stopped short by this vintage Russian car parked nonchalantly in a lot filled with Hondas and Subarus. We weren’t the only ones to do a double-take: soon J was joined by another man, both of them circling the car, searching for a name or identifying feature, and peering in the windows to check out the dash. “Even the radio dial is in Russian,” J remarked, and the other man nodded. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Back at home, I did some Googling, and I think what we saw was a late-’50s era GAZ Volga “Shark”. “GAZ” stands for Gorkovsky Avtomobilny Zavod, or Gorky Automobile Plant, and this Volga is apparently a late enough model to feature the toothy vertical grille that debuted in 1958, but early enough to still feature the iconic leaping-deer hood ornament, which was phased out in 1961.
I don’t know much about cars, but I know enough to gawk and take pictures when a relic from Cold War Russia pulls up and parks in the neighborhood.
This is my Day Nine contribution to NaBloPoMo, or National Blog Posting Month, a commitment to post every day during the month of November: thirty days, thirty posts.
