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Volgas were rugged cars for the Russian home market, built from 1 mm thick steel and styled in the mid-'60s American idiom. In communist times, the Volga - built at the Gorky Auto Plant (GAZ) factory beside the river Volga - was the sinister black KGB saloon of a dozen cold-war thrillers. The earlier M21 model was imported to the UK in small numbers in the '60s, but this later version never made it, despite being shown at the Earls Court Motor Show in 1971 and 1972. It drove like it looked - all heavy and ponderous - offering anaemic 95 mph performance even with a 2.3-litre, 110 bhp engine.
Believe it or not, the M24 survives. It was revised as the 3102 in 1982 with more modern bumpers and has been joined in the Volga range by the 3110 which has more smoothed-off front-end styling to make it look like an '80s Volvo. Both models are available with a variety of petrol and turbo-diesel engines from Rover and Toyota, or the original GAZ engine for the purist. Not a company to rest on its laurels, GAZ, in co-operation with American venture capitalists, has produced a new Volga that looks like a jacked-up S-Type Jaguar. But don't worry, Volga fans. It's still based on the same 1968 chassis.
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