ZIS-5

The ZIS-5 was a two-axle, rear-wheel-drive Soviet truck with a three-tonne payload, built by the Moscow ZIS factory, the plant that later became ZiL. Serial production began on 1 October 1933, and the truck grew out of the earlier AMO-2 and AMO-3, which were themselves built from the American Autocar design under licence. Together with the GAZ-AA it became the main Soviet truck from the 1930s into the 1950s and the workhorse of the Red Army, where soldiers nicknamed it the Tryohtonka. Production left Moscow during the 1941 evacuation and continued at Ulyanovsk and Miass, and a simplified wartime version, the ZIS-5V, used wood and flat fenders to save materials. About one million were built across all plants, and it was the first Soviet motor vehicle to be exported. It spawned buses, tractors, halftracks and gas-generator variants, and was replaced by the ZIS-150.