The car has subsequently become an icon of its time in Russia, having been relatively popular, and featuring in film and photographic images of a defining period in the history of the Soviet Union.

There had been various attempts to modify the GAZ-A using locally designed elements, but the body structures used traditional timber frames with panels attached, which were labour-intensive to produce and excessively prone to deform.

GAZ's western technology partner, Ford, took a conservative approach to those developments, but during the early 1930s it also joined the switch to all-steel car bodies.

The Soviet Union was keen for the same technology to be applied at the GAZ plant in Gorky (now Nizhny Novgorod), exploiting the ten-year technology-sharing agreement which had been signed with the Ford Motor Company in 1932 and which, at that stage, remained more or less intact.

The prototype was powered by a four-cylinder engine (a modified version of the one used in its predecessor the GAZ-A), although it appears already to have been intended that production cars, like the Ford on which they were based, would use V8 units.

A major innovation for the manufacturer was the all-steel body, although at this stage the roof was still reinforced using timber side rails and was coated with synthetic “leatherette” fabric.

By the end of 1936 the plant had produced 2,524 GAZ M-1s, and in 1937 an M-1 was displayed in Paris at the International Artistic and technical exhibition of modern life.

Under the bonnet/hood the car came with automatic ignition, while the cabin featured front seats that could be adjusted, sun-visors, along with an electric fuel gauge, and windows which could be swiveled into an open position.

The three speed manual transmission now featured synchromesh in the upper two ratios,[3] and was the gear box that would be carried forward to the replacement GAZ-M20 Pobeda in the later 1940s.

The seat covers were of thick cloth material coloured grey or brown, while the interior décor was characterised by painted metal, albeit combined with some wood trim.

[4][5] The necessary drawings were purchased in 1937–38, and after all the measurements had been converted to their metric values the necessary tooling was created and volume production of this engine, now designated as the GAZ-11 unit, began in 1940.