Largely inspired by the incoming Lend-Lease jeeps, the Russians decided to build up an own jeep production.
In record time, the GAZ design bureau developed several pre-production models ending up with the narrow-treaded
← GAZ-64, shown left, of which almost 700 were produced.
Further improvements resulted in the GAZ-67 and production started in September 1943 with a total of 718 manufactured in the same year.
By the end of war, another 4851 had left the assembly lanes of the GAZ factory (compared to over 50000 jeeps delivered under the Lend-Lease agreement !).
To speed up production, the GAZ-67 was largely made up of existing components, e.g. :

• engine, gearbox and underseat fuel tank from the GAZ-MM truck,
• radiator from the GAZ-AAA truck,

Major drawbacks were the high fuel consumption and the weak brakes.
The GAZ-67 differed from the later GAZ-67B in that the former had a radiator grill made from welded rods and the latter was fitted with a pressed sheet-metal radiator grill, just like the Willys MB slat-grill differed from the later production model.

Note : All truck drawings are based on the excellent line-drawings of Mr. N. Polikarpov in the Russian magazine M-Hobby.