The roar of engines from the past: retro car festival held near Kazan
Hundreds of models of cars and motorcycles were presented to Tatarstan residents and guests of the republic at the 17th International Festival of Historical Equipment
A real festival of speed and history took place near Kazan. Hundreds of models of cars and motorcycles won the hearts of Tatarstan residents and took them decades back when the market was not filled with Chinese cars and even getting a domestic car was a real stroke of luck. Read about what models were presented by collectors from all over Russia in a report of Realnoe Vremya.
"53 years ago, this car was used to drive to your own wedding”
Sviyaga Hills ski resort became the venue for the exhibits like it was last year. Collectors presented more than 300 retro cars and motorcycles from all over Russia.
The festival was held in Tatarstan for the 17th time, and the number of participants is growing from year to year. This year, collections from 17 regions of the country were presented: Moscow, Saratov, Krasnodar, Perm, Yekaterinburg and others. At the grand opening of the event, Chairman of the State Council of Tatarstan, President of the Autoretroclub-21 Farid Mukhametshin thanked the organisers noting that they are doing an important job by supporting the automobile producers of our country and paying tribute to veterans.
According to Mukhametshin, the festival was designed to show that the technological development and growth of our own automotive equipment in Russia are at a high level.
“Our republic also a makes machines: KAMAZ lorries, combat and civilian aircraft, helicopters, Zelenodolsk ships and much more. This equipment is in demand on the market today and is bought,” he noted.
Before the official start of the event and the retro rally, Mukhametshin traditionally examined the exhibits together with the organisers and participants of the festival recalling that he himself used to have a Volga, Pobeda and GAZ-69. After learning this, a Togliatti artist decided to present Mukhametshin one of the paintings depicting a Volga car.
“Collecting is a disease”
The festival participants also happily shared their stories. Emil and Valery from Kazan told about their passion for Moskvich cars.
“Collecting is a disease. In our case, it starts in childhood. My classmate’s grandfather had an Izh-2125 Combi, and he always told me how much he loved this car, how they went to the countryside together, how they fixed it. But my family didn’t have cars, so I always dreamed of having something similar. And when we grew up and got our licenses, we decided that our first cars would be Moskvichs,” the guys shared.
Emil now has three cars of this kind, and he plans to renovate several more. He likes to give cars a second life, and not just renovate them to their original form. Emil is convinced that modern cars do not look as attractive as Moskvichs.
Rinat Entuziast, the owner of three GAZ models — GAZ-21, GAZ-24 manufactured in 1979 and 1980, shared the story of his collecting with our correspondent. He said that he had been collecting and restoring cars for eight years.
“This particular car, it has never been painted. But what’s remarkable is that in 1979, AvtoGAZ did not have high-quality paint, it was oil-based. This coating does not shine like acrylic paint. Absolutely everything in this car is original, even the seats are very soft. The tires were also made in the USSR, and if you look closely, they are also terry-clothed, I keep them especially for such trips,” the owner shared.
Hyundai Solaris instead of a children’s pedal car
A collection of children’s cars was presented at the festival, which is estimated at 5 million rubles. Its owner Nail Yangeldin admitted that he once sold his Hyundai Solaris for one of the models.
“The idea of collecting such cars in order to surprise both the population of the republic and collectors came around eight years ago. During this time, a collection of 40 children’s pedal cars has been assembled. They are from different years, and some models are very rare. The oldest of them is a GAZ made in 1936, it was made at the Gorky Automobile Plant. We also have a crane called Ant. This design idea of a Soviet engineer has no equals. The collection includes a pedal plane — a very rare thing that was produced by the Kharkiv Plant of Children’s Toys, and now there are about 5 of them in Russia,” noted Yangeldin..
Two more events awaited the festival’s collectors. It’s a sports retro rally and then a tourist gathering where they could visit various interesting sites where they can take photos.
A top judge, a member of the sports council of the Russian, chairman of the Higher Certification Commission Igor Sukhov noted that the racers’ wives wanted to go with them when they learned that photo sessions would be held during the rally.
