Your classic: GAZ Volga M21

| 11 Feb 2022

My passion for classic cars started along time ago, when I was a child.

I can clearly remember my father’s words: “My boy, a black Volga is a car for special people. It is the car of Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space.”

These words were the foundations of my dream.

Around nine years ago I was able to buy my first classic car, a 1969 Warszawa.

It was a model with a long history, having been conceived and designed during the time of the Soviet Union and built in Poland.

It was named after the Polish capital, as a gift from the Soviet Union to support Poland and its economy after the Second World War.

I fell in love with that car and the history behind it.

My love for classics became so strong that over the following years I went on to own three of those cars.

They were not in a perfect condition but they were compact, and with a bit of investment I was sure that I could put them back on the streets of Sofia, Bulgaria.

Then my life changed.

In early 2015 I moved to London, and I was forced to sell all three Warszawas.

A year later I managed to buy my ’69 GAZ Volga M21 in Bulgaria, still wearing its original black paint from the factory and in stunning condition.

The black Model C was built only for government officials and is known as the luxury variant.

It had covered just 14,000km and had been sitting in a garage under a cover for more than five years.

The car had originally been owned by a Bulgarian who bought it from an official dealer after sitting on the waiting list for eight years!

The GAZ M21 has a 2.5-litre engine but only three gears, so it is not a racing car: it was built to make a statement, and can carry six passengers.

I managed to change all of the electrical system and fluid pipes, because over the years they had deteriorated.

The car was fully serviced, but my idea was to keep its original look as much as I could.

In 2019 my girlfriend and I went to St Petersburg, Russia, to visit the official GAZ shop and buy some original parts for the interior.

We acquired new carpets, in black, but have retained the factory seat covers. The hardest thing to source was probably the new fuel tank.

It took some time, but in the end we managed to track one down.

The Volga has new wheels with white rims and whitewall tyres, which give a classic look, and the final touch was a ceramic wax to cover and protect the paint.