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Reader Submissions: 1968 ZAZ-965A Zaporozhets

1968 ZAZ-965A Zaporozhets

Petrolicious Productions By Petrolicious Productions
September 25, 2013
7 comments

Owner: Dmitriy Lezhnev (Лежнев Дмитрий)

Location: Saint-Petersburg, Russia

Year, Make, and Model: 1968 ZAZ-965A Zaporozhets

We received a Your Car reader submission from Dmitriy Lezhnev, in St. Petersburg, Russia, who wrote to us claiming that he used Google Translate to compose his email. We are grateful that he took the time to reach out and to translate his thoughts from Russian to English, because these photographs he took of his car are incredibly stunning

Dmitriy bought the little ZAZ-965A in 2006, the year it was least expensive, because he enjoyed the way it looked. This Soviet car was based on the Fiat 600 with some design elements of the Volkswagen Beetle, like the torsion bar front suspension and the air-cooled engine. Ever since he purchased the car, Dmitriy has been restoring it little by little, because there are few parts available and not enough time to dedicate to the car as he would like. On weekends in the summertime, he takes the car for long runs (about 2,300 kilometers) away from the city.

Dmitriy loves to photograph vintage cars—click here to see some of his other photography.

Want to see your vintage car on Petrolicious? Click here for more information.

Tags Air-Cooled Engine/ Dmitriy Lezhnev/ Fiat 600/ Russia/ Soviet/ Volkswagen Beetle/ ZAZ-965A Zaporozhets
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Eba NormaalneLuis Augusto MaltaJB21Denis PorokhniakДиан Димитров Recent comment authors
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Eba Normaalne
Eba Normaalne

My grandfather had this a long long time ago. My mother has talked about her memory of a road trip from East Estonia, to the capital Tallinn, a horribly long ride(4-5 hours) for 160 kilometres.
Imagine driving 2300 km-s

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2 years ago
Luis Augusto Malta
Luis Augusto Malta

Wonderful!

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5 years ago
JB21
JB21

I love the notion of “classic” and nostalgia that comes with it. This car was horrible when new, and I bet that hasn’t changed a bit. What changes is our perceptions. Welcome to the weird world of collectibles, where value has got nothing to do with the attributes of the good. No wonder Yugo is becoming quite pricy these days.

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5 years ago
Denis Porokhniak
Denis Porokhniak

The next model was also interesting (ZAZ 968 http://500px.com/photo/33800011 ) has some styling elements of NSU Prinz and BMW 2002, but features a rear-mounted, air-cooled V4 with cute air scoops on the rear fenders that everyone called ‘ears’)). The car was even featured in Cars2 as one of the villains. My granddad had one in baby blue… or so I’m told, as I was too little to remember. Oh, and the tag “Russian” is somewhat misleading. It’s not a Russian car, ZAZ cars were designed and produced in Zaporizhia, Ukraine. ‘Zaporozhets’ basically means a resident of Zaporizhia. Unfortunately these days… Read more »

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5 years ago
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Amazing pics. I can’t imagine what are 2,300 km with this car!

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5 years ago
Nick
Nick

Beautiful photography. Rare car only ever seen another in the 007 movie Goldeneye.
Definitely Fiat 600 based. Well done.

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5 years ago
André Borges
André Borges

What an adorable little car. I’d really enjoy to see these and other rarities more often here in Curitiba, although these little Zaporozhets seem to be a particularly hard sight, even in Russia!

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5 years ago