Car made during Soviet-era goes on display 73 years later

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This Warszawa M-20 car with serial number 000001, based on a Soviet Union's model, was the first vehicle to leave a car factory in Poland after World War II, on Nov. 6, 1951 and now, 73 years later, it goes on public display at a private museum in Otrebusy, central Poland, on Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)

By MONIKA SCISLOWSKA and CZAREK SOKOLOWSKI Associated Press
OTREBUSY, Poland (AP) — The very first car produced in Soviet-era Poland after World War II went on display Friday near Warsaw after it was tracked down in Finland during decades of searching and acquired after years of negotiations.

The chunky 1951 Warszawa M-20 bears the serial number 000001 it had when it left the FSO Passenger Car Factory in Warsaw on Nov. 6 of that year, exactly 73 years ago. It is a relic of the period of Poland’s post-war subordination to communist-ruled Soviet Union.

“We are extremely proud because now we count among the very few people in the world who have retrieved the very first vehicles of the series made in their countries,” said Zbigniew Mikiciuk, a co-founder of the private museum in Otrebusy.

This Warszawa M-20 car with serial number 000001, based on a Soviet Union’s model, was the first vehicle to leave a car factory in Poland after World War II, on Nov. 6, 1951 and now, 73 years later, it goes on public display at a private museum in Otrebusy, central Poland, on Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024. PHOTO: AP

It took more than two years of negotiations to obtain the vehicle from the Finnish owners, he said.

The car’s original light color has been painted over with a shade of brown that was fashionable in the 1970s and bears marks of once-intensive use that the museum has preserved to keep it authentic, but it is still “holding together”and is “cool” despite its age, Mikiciuk said.

The now-defunct FSO factory intensively sought the original model during the 1970s in hopes of using it to mark an anniversary. The company even offered a new car in exchange for it, at a time when cars were still a luxury in Poland, but to no avail.

People take a closer look at the Warszawa M-20 car with serial number 000001. PHOTO: AP

The FSO factory was originally built in the late 1940s to make Italian Fiat 508 and 1100 cars, but Soviet leaders in Moscow objected to the ties with a Western company during the Cold War. They ordered production to be based on the Soviet Union’s Pobeda (Victory) cars, with Moscow providing the technology and the production lines.

The car now joins the museum’s many historic vehicles, including a 1928 U.S.-made Oakland brought to Poland before the war by a doctor’s family and a 1953 Buick that belonged to Poland’s communist-era Prime Minister Jozef Cyrankiewicz. The former leader brought the car to Poland via the Netherlands apparently to avoid a direct connection to the U.S. during the Cold War.

The museum also displays a Volvo that was used by Poland’s communist leader, Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, known for having imposed martial law in 1981.

“We have been doing this for more than 50 years and we are not collecting cars you can see in the street but cars that have their history, their soul and their legend,” Mikiciuk said.

The museum owners hope that by displaying the initial Warszawa M-20 they can encourage members of the public to come forward and fill in more details of its history.