It was derived from the civilian GAZ-M1 car using its chassis,[3] which was itself a modified version of a Ford design, produced by the Nizhny Novgorod-based vehicle manufacturer GAZ.

The BA-20's tires were designed to be resistant to bullets and shrapnel by the simple expedient of filling them with spongey rubber.

The armor was too thin to stop anything other than fragments or small-arms fire, and the 7.62 mm machine gun was not adequate to penetrate other scout vehicles.

The Red Army produced very few wheeled armored fighting vehicles in the war, but replaced the BA-20 with the BA-64.

The main recognition feature is the flat roof of the BA-20; the FAI has two dome-shaped covers over the driver's and co-driver's stations.