[6] The GAZ-13 was powered by a 195-hp SAE gross 5.5 L V8 with a 4 barrel carburetor called the ZMZ-13 engine, and driven through a push-button automatic transmission of a similar design to the Chrysler PowerFlite unit.

The engine was a relatively modern and reliable design for its time, and a modified version of it with a reduced compression ratio and smaller 2 barrel carburetor would be used on the GAZ-53 truck, alongside the BRDM-2 military vehicle.

Chaikas were used by Soviet ambassadors and Communist Party First Secretaries in East Germany, North Korea, Bulgaria, Hungary, Mongolia, China, and Finland, among others; Jiang Qing and Fidel Castro were given one each by General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev, who himself preferred the Chaika to his ZIL,[13] and kept one at his summer dacha.

He also presented one limousine version each to both King Sisavang Vatthana of Laos and Prime Minister, Prince Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia on their visits to the Soviet Union.

[15] Pyotr Masherov, First Secretary of the Communist Party of Byelorussia, was killed in 1980 when the Chaika he was travelling in collided with a GAZ-53 truck carrying potatoes.