The ZIS-101 was a

limousine A limousine ( or ), or limo () for short, is a large, chauffeur-driven luxury vehicle with a partition between the driver compartment and the passenger compartment. A very long wheelbase luxury sedan (with more than four doors) driven by a pro ...

produced by the

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

car manufacturer '' Zavod Imeni Stalina''. It was introduced in 1936. Its

chassis A chassis (, ; plural ''chassis'' from French châssis ) is the load-bearing framework of an artificial object, which structurally supports the object in its construction and function. An example of a chassis is a vehicle frame, the underpa ...

was

reverse-engineered Reverse engineering (also known as backwards engineering or back engineering) is a process or method through which one attempts to understand through deductive reasoning how a previously made device, process, system, or piece of software accompli ...

from a Buick 33-90, except for the front suspension, engine, exhaust and battery carried over from 1933 experimental limousine L-1, itself an unlicensed Buick 32-90 copy, but the body was designed by Budd Company for whopping $1,500,000 while the stamps were made by Hamilton Foundry & Machine Company for another $500,000. It was equipped with an straight-eight OHV

engine An engine or motor is a machine designed to convert one or more forms of energy into mechanical energy. Available energy sources include potential energy (e.g. energy of the Earth's gravitational field as exploited in hydroelectric power ...

(a metric copy of Buick 345) producing up to and giving a top speed of . The car was fitted with a 3-speed manual

gearbox Propulsion transmission is the mode of transmitting and controlling propulsion power of a machine. The term ''transmission'' properly refers to the whole drivetrain, including clutch, gearbox, prop shaft (for rear-wheel drive vehicles), diffe ...

. It was followed by the ZIS-101A that had improved the engine giving and a new top speed of approximately . Production ended in 1941 with over 8,000 cars built. In 1939, a two-seat sport version designed by Valentin Nikolaevich Rostkov called 101-Sport was built. The engine was the same as in the 101-A, but boosted to and a top speed of (although a ''

Pravda ''Pravda'' ( rus, Правда, p=ˈpravdə, a=Ru-правда.ogg, "Truth") is a Russian broadsheet newspaper, and was the official newspaper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, when it was one of the most influential papers in the ...

'' article claimed 170–180 km/h). It was, however, not made in more than one or two copies.

Variants

* ZIS-101: Initial production version. Produced 1936–1939. * ZIS-101A: ZIS-101 with improved engine. Produced 1939–1941. * ZIS-101B: Improved ZIS-101, prototype. * ZIS-101C: Ambulance version. * ZIS-101 Sport: Two-seat version. Produced in 1939. * ZIS-102: Convertible version. Produced 1938–1940.

References

Cars of Russia Cars introduced in 1936 1940s cars ZiL vehicles Luxury vehicles Sports cars Soviet automobiles Flagship vehicles First car made by manufacturer {{Classicpow-auto-stub