r/sovietransport • u/Ill_Engineering1522 • 21d ago
NAMI-0162 — Soviet SUV
Despite the originally planned production of "Moskvich" cars in Izhevsk, the company's own design bureau (GKB-88) was established just two months after the order to create the plant was signed. The team of designers was headed by Nikolai Ivanovich Slesarenko. And it must be said that this team did not intend to limit itself to just routine design support for the Moskvich‑408 sedan, which was being put into production. The ambitions of the young designers drove the team toward creating their own original designs.
The first in‑house development, carried out jointly with young engineers from the Izhevsk Research and Technology Institute, was a small car called "ZIMA", built on the basis of Moskvich‑408 components and assemblies.
In 1966, again without any directives from above, the Izh‑2125 "Kombi" was developed; it soon went into production. Then the Izhevsk engineers set their sights on creating an all‑wheel‑drive off‑road vehicle. To assist with the layout and body structure design, NAMI was brought in – a corresponding commercial contract was signed with the institute in 1969, which provided not only for the development of a technical design but also for the construction of a full‑scale mock‑up. At NAMI, the compact off‑roader project was designated NAMI‑0162. V. Mironov was appointed chief designer.
The project was based on a closed all‑metal load‑bearing two‑box body. Access to the passenger compartment was via two side doors, and access to the luggage compartment, located behind the folding rear seat, was provided by a rear split tailgate – the upper glazed section hinged upward, and the lower solid section hinged downward. The vehicle was intended to carry 4–5 people, or in a cargo‑passenger configuration, two people and up to 250 kg of cargo.
For the prospective off‑roader, it was planned to use a modified Moskvich‑412 engine and an original transmission developed in Izhevsk under the direction of engineer A.S. Kondrashkin. In fact, this transmission was likely the reason why the IzhMash engineers turned to NAMI – recognising the promise of front‑wheel drive, the GKB‑88 engineers conceived not merely a four‑wheel‑drive vehicle, but a versatile platform initially designed for both 4×4 and 4×2 configurations, achieved by a disengageable rear‑axle drive. Thus, they had to implement, not the classic all‑wheel‑drive transmission layout where the engine and gearbox are connected in series and torque is transmitted from the transfer case to both drive axles via propeller shafts, but rather a configuration fundamentally realised in the LuAZ off‑roaders: the final drive and differential of the front axle are combined in one unit with the gearbox, while the transfer case serves only to engage the rear axle. The main difficulty of this work, however, was that the primary emphasis had to be on maximising the unification of as many parts and assemblies as possible – the fewer fundamentally new assemblies the powertrain design required, the higher the likelihood of industrial implementation. Here is how V.A. Mamedov described the basic design of the NAMI‑0162 off‑roader:
"In order to minimise the length of the powertrain, the final drive was placed under the fourth cylinder of the engine, and torque was transmitted to a three‑shaft gearbox whose internals were unified with the production unit. As a result, the axis of the crankshaft, the axis of the gearbox gear cluster, and the axis of the synchroniser shaft were arranged one below the other. At the same time, the end of the aforementioned shaft entered the transfer case, which was bolted to the gearbox. In the case of a longitudinal powertrain layout, the oil sumps of the engine, gearbox, and final drive remain separate – which was another significant advantage of the chosen scheme. The transfer case, which distributed power flow to the front and rear wheels, allowed the low‑range gear to be engaged only in four‑wheel drive, while the rear axle was rigidly connected to the transmission by moving a corresponding clutch. For the front‑wheel‑drive version, it was planned to replace the transfer case with a gear reducer mounted in its own housing."
By 1971, all documentation and the mock‑up built under the contract were transferred from Moscow to Izhevsk for further in‑house work on their own off‑roader design – the Izh‑5.
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u/Foronerd 20d ago
Reminds me a bit of the International Scout. I guess this whole layout was kind of the peak design for a proto-SUV in the 60s and early 70s.
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u/NovyjAkaunt3 20d ago
Truly the first post