Remember the GAZ 3110? Of course you do, it’s the taxi that was hooned by Jason Bourne in the second installment of the Bourne trilogy. And thanks to that film, millions of people got to see what they thought was a Volvo 240 with a weird front fascia. Truth be told, the GAZ dates back to a time when the Volvo 240 series was barely in the works, which should give you a good idea as to the mechanicals underhood. And now you can even have the 3110 in 1:43.
The GAZ 3110 came out in 1997, and essentially represented yet another facelift of the GAZ 24 which premiered in 1970, retaining its basic midsection and architecture. The GAZ 24 model line diverged a bit in the early 1980s with the release of the upmarket 3102 and no-frills 2410, and the 3110 traces its lineage to the basic 2410 model. And yes, these numbers are a pain to keep straight, but just wait till you talk to someone who actually knows all the different engines that went into the GAZ cars, because they have even more complex index numbers.
The 3110’s main claim to fame is that the poor GAZ plant managed to get this thing out the door in the first place. The Gorky Automotive plant in Nizhny Novgorod, formerly a city closed off to foreigners, suffered quite a lot in the 1990s. First up was the wholesale implosion of its new V8 AWD sedan, the 3105, which almost nobody bought (something like 120 examples were made, and promptly used up by government institutions). Then came the financial crisis of 1998 and months of cash shortages.
The 31029 model, which itself was a facelift of the 2410, came out in 1992 and managed to stay in production till 1997. Not that many examples of the 31029 are in use now, because they’ve all rusted or have fallen apart. And then in 1997 the already aging 3110 replaced the aging 31029, debuting a “new” fascia and some marginally different body panels. The greatest thing about the 3110 is that the department that designed the interior finally got the memo that the 1990s had arrived, and this is where the car received the most changes.
The whole GAZ 24 line of cars suffers from a number of things really, chief among which is the perception that they’re all facelifts of the same model dating back to 1970. And to a large degree this is very much true. We’re accustomed to treating the Volvo 140 and 240 series cars as being totally different things, but the GAZ line of cars received a far greater number of changes over its complicated lifetime than the 140/240 series.
The GAZ 3110 and its successors (oh yeah, it’s been facelifted a few times since) are perhaps the closest thing that Russia had to a Ford Crown Vic – a model that has been rendered obsolete many times over, but managed to stay in production due to its simplicity, durability, and ease of maintenance. And now you can buy it in 1:43 and make people guess what it is.
The eBays are of course the best place to get these, and you shouldn’t pay more than $18.00 for this particular spiffy version of the GAZ by scale model manufacturer IST, though some others like the 24 and the 2410 by IXO/DeAgostini can be found for even cheaper as they don’t come with a jewel box.
[Images: Copyright 2013 Hooniverse/Jay Ramey]
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