The Limousines We Lost

The remains of the promising ZIL-4102 named "Misha"
The Decline of the Automobile Empire
The creation of high-class government cars has always been considered the prerogative of select states. One can argue a lot about the sovereignty of a country, but when President Yeltsin switched from a ZIL to a Mercedes-Benz Pullman Guard, Russia's independence was spoken of with great conventionality.
After Vladimir Putin came to power, it took more than ten years before they thought about creating a domestic high-class limousine. The start of the "Cortege" project dates back to 2012, and a couple of years later the car was presented to President Putin. The result of the work was approved, and now we know this car as "Aurus".
It is hardly possible to call it 100 percent Russian - some components were supplied from abroad. In the museum of the Special Purpose Garage, which is at VDNKh, there is a very illustrative stand with elements and units of the Aurus limousine design. The oil filter is made in Austria, the valve timing elements are made in Germany, the ignition coils are made in Turkey, the traction lithium-ion battery is Enertech from South Korea, and so on. In fairness, the latter company was absorbed by the Rosatom corporation back in 2023.
One can only hope that all imported components on the "Auruses" of the country's top officials have long been replaced by domestic analogues. Be that as it may, the government flagship of Russian production with some imported parts is in any case better than the German Mercedes-Benz.


Mercedes-Benz has long been the main vehicle of the Special Purpose Garage
Here the hackneyed cliche about how our grandfathers (fathers) could do better is just begging to be used. A cliche is a cliche, but that's exactly it. Let's digress from the topic of modern executive cars and return to the 80s. And the exhibition "Design under the heading "secret" 1922-2022", which was held in 2023 in the Special Purpose Garage Museum at VDNKh, will help us with this. At that time, Muscovites and guests of the capital were shown about five hundred sketches, 23 models in varying degrees of preservation and artifacts stories modern project "Cortege".
But of particular interest is the search for the appearance of the new flagship of the domestic automobile industry – a limousine for General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev. Since the mid-80s, the ZIL-41047 served as the main representative limousine. It is very difficult to call the car innovative – it was a cosmetically refreshed ZIL-41045, which, in turn, is a product of a deep restyling of the ZIL-114. The latter was born in 1967 and by the mid-80s it was outdated not only technically, but also morally.
It should be noted that the Soviet school of building high-class limousines did not evolve on its own. The main reference point was the Cadillac and Lincoln of the Presidents of the United States. The cars regularly met each other both on foreign tours and in the Soviet Union. Therefore, it was very important for the first car of the state to have no less solid appearance than the member-carrier from the White House. And this clearly worked out.

The ZIL-41047 looked quite respectable against the backdrop of the American Caddy.
Despite the rather archaic architecture of the limousine – a frame body structure and a 3-speed automatic transmission – some technical solutions of the ZILs are impressive even now. The main customer was the Special Purpose Garage, and its requirements sometimes seemed absurd. For example, the car of the first person had to move without any comments with the accelerator pedal fully depressed until the fuel in the tanks was exhausted. This is an extreme operating mode, which places special demands on the cooling and lubrication system.
During testing at the Dmitrov proving ground in the Moscow region, the oil on one of the ZIL-41042s chronically failed to drain into the sump, and the oil receiver worked idle several times. The result was oil starvation, a broken connecting rod, a punctured cylinder block, and oil gushing onto a hot manifold. The ZIL miraculously did not burn out. The problem was solved by reducing the engine speed by lowering the final drive ratio. In the 80s, government ZILs were the only production cars in the world capable of drying out the fuel tank on the highway in continuous "full-throttle" mode.




Passenger ZILs were never produced on a conveyor belt. Only on stocks. In the photo are the forms on which the craftsmen tapped out the steel body panels. All the flaws were generously masked with tin.
The designers of the ZiL passenger car division also pleased us with much more subtle technical solutions. Nowadays, active radars and automatic braking systems are nothing new, but in the early 80s, this was a fantasy. At ZiL, they developed, tested, and configured a similar option for the cars of the USSR's top officials on their own initiative.
The heavy limousine stopped automatically as soon as an obstacle entered its echolocator field. But it was the onboard radars that let the designers down - according to the GON specialists, the attackers could have faked the reflected signal and forcibly stopped the motorcade.
The ZiL engineers' portfolio included another trendy feature - a system for automatically maintaining a constant body height. The chief designer of the top-class ZiL-4104 vehicle, I. S. Stepanov, recalls:
Design is classified as "secret"
In 1985, the Soviet Union had big plans for the future of domestic luxury cars. At that time, car manufacturers delighted consumers with new technology, but it was luxury cars that were of particular interest. The program was called "List of models of promising luxury passenger cars ZiL" and assumed ten limousine options at once. The document was agreed upon with the 9th Directorate of the State Security Committee and was designed for the period 1985-2000.
The plans included a sedan (regular and armored), a station wagon for special communications, a limousine (regular and armored), a convertible, and even a landau-type body with a hard top over the driver's compartment and a folding top over the passenger compartment. They also envisioned a limousine with two seats in the passenger compartment. This "minibus" was intended for security and service personnel. The "black doctor" concept was also continued in the new generation of vehicles - a special station wagon was designed to rescue elderly general secretaries.





The only one to survive was the ZIL-4102 "Raya".



The information plate under the exhibit in the GON museum reads: "Asymmetrical model of ZIL-4101/4102 for wind tunnel testing. The left half (without drawing) is "model #3", the right half (made in detail) is "model #4". Developer: Likhachev Moscow Automobile Plant. Scale 1:5."
Only two cars were built in metal, in the simplest version with a short body. They went down in history under the index 4102, and in common parlance they were called "Raia" and "Misha". From the nicknames it is clear who the cars were intended for. The dark-colored sedan for Mikhail Sergeyevich did not survive to this day - only its front end is taken to exhibitions. But the light-colored "Raia" is alive and is a priceless artifact of a bygone era. It sounds pompous, but that's exactly it. The new generation car received a new monocoque body, a bunch of electronics, fiberglass roof and floor elements, a hood and trunk, the rear suspension evolved from the previous spring to independent. Only the ZIL-4104 engine and 3-speed "automatic" seemed outdated. Both units were inherited from previous models of government ZILs.


Model of the ZIL-4101 limousine. Only preserved in photos.
We lost not only "Raia" and "Misha", but also much more respectable cars. We are talking about the government limousines ZIL-4101 and four-door limousines on its shortened base. The latter, obviously, were intended, among other things, for parades on Red Square. Even at the mock-up stage, the 4101 limousine acquired its own style, increasingly moving away from the 4102 sedans "Raia" and "Misha". But it never even reached the stage of a running prototype.










The search models of the 70-80s allow us to appreciate the flight of imagination of the ZIL artists. Somewhere British motifs are visible, somewhere American, and somewhere there is a Soviet style.
Regarding how modern Russia treats the legacy of the legendary ZiL. After the demolition of the automobile plant in Moscow, the ZiL Museum in Sokolniki remained. It exhibits such rarities as the AMO F-15, unique equipment of the Special Design Bureau (SKB), the ZiL-118 Yunost minibus and other evidence of technological greatness. More precisely, they were exhibited. Since May 17, 2024, the museum has been closed, and part of its treasures have moved to the Leningrad Center for the History of Motor Transport.
What the Northern capital has to do with the historical legacy of the Moscow Likhachev Plant remains a mystery. Perhaps the Leningrad Institute of Radio Engineering created a modern information system for the stillborn ZIL-80 project in the late 4102s. The smart technology spoke to the driver in a female voice and could, for example, warn about an open door or trunk. Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev put an end to such a luxurious car, which, in fact, was the beginning of the degradation of the I. A. Likhachev Plant.
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