Retro cars.
The Russian automotive industry.
«Cheburashka»
ZAZ-966 "Zaporozhets", people in the «long-eared bat», «eared», «Cheburashka» - Soviet passenger car of extra small class. Sky rear 2-door 4-seat car extra small class ZAZ 966 been produced at «Zaporozhye automobile plant» in the period from 1967 to 1974, in various modifications. The development of this model designers «ZAZ» was started in 1960. The first 966-e, descended from the conveyor with 1 198 CC 41-strong motor. Part of the vehicles equipped with a 31-strong engines МеМЗ-966А. The maximum speed of 120 km/hour. The national name - eared» or «Cheburashka» - ZAZ 966 received thanks to its air inlets, located on the sides of the body. This generation of «Zaporozhets» differed from the previous one the new rear suspension and the PPC. We have improved the indicators of comfort and capacity of the front part of the passenger compartment. ZAZ 966 was simple and inexpensive in maintenance of a car with a good flow. Early prototypes of the car have had enough of the original appearance, however, the final version demonstrates the obvious similarity of the design with the German малолитражкой NSU Prinz IV (Federal Republic of Germany, 1961), - the latter, however, itself, as a number of заднемоторных cars sixties, the plastic decision of the body with the «belting» подоконной line in General repeated the American Chevrolet Corvair, introduced in the end of 1959. 
It should be noted that the design of the «Корвэйра» was in those years, one of the most frequently copied - a list of completed in the near key of the car was very broad and included in such a model, as the British the sunbeam/ Hillman Imp, German NSU Prinz, Italian FIAT 1300/ 1500, French Simca 1000 and Renault R8, Japanese Mazda 800 and Hino Contessa and others. «Chevrolet» was chronologically the first, and, accordingly, the initial prototype of the entire style, and other models with the same design, which began to appear already soon after its premiere at the Paris motor show, 1960 - in approximately the same degree of imitations.
Some sources, however, contain and assumptions about the presence of the «North American» the roots of the design 966-th «Zaporozhets» - it is known, that the sample Chevrolet Corvair was at the disposal of US, and was later transferred to the Zaporizhia automobile plant (according to another version - in Melitopol motor) with the purpose of studying of the engine cooling system. Continuing the comparison, the design of the rear lights and профилировка side clearly overlap with other American model - Ford Falcon beginning of the sixties, and the interior with the instrument panel, executed in the form of open shelves, trapezoidal instrument panel and двухспицевым driving extremely reminded English Hillman Imp.
Also ZAZ-966 returned the famous «ears» (air inlets in the wall of the body).
The main innovation was to use a completely redesigned rear suspension with a more perfect kinematic scheme: instead of going with another «Fiat 600» diagonal levers and swinging half with one карданным hinge on each - And-shaped «slanting» levers and the two hinge on the semi-axis (external - drive, internal - type «bell»). 
It was a successful scheme for comparison, similar in kinematics of the rear suspension for a long time it had been used on cars BMW, starting with заднемоторного BMW 700, but also on the more well-known machines 3-she (E21 and E30) and the 5-th (E12) series, Ford Sierra and Ford Scorpio, as well as many others. More optimal kinematics only the complex of any linkage rear suspensions, widespread only in the last decade.
Thus, the emergence of ZAZ-966 marked departure from the original, quite successful, and the ratio of the size, weight, capacity, working volume of the engine of the car, and other characteristics characteristic of the first «Zaporozhets» ZAZ-965 and inherited from the cult at home «Fiat 600».
Test-drive of ZAZ-966 "Zaporozhets"
