THE GENERAL'S MOTOR
Some cars inspire respect. A few that shall remain nameless inspire apathy, but a 1969 Volga has the power to evoke awe, especially when photographed in Cambridge. This was partially due to its associations with Cold War cinema, with shades of Funeral in Berlin, but the main reason is that the Volga M21 really is a very imposing machine. The black paintwork, a fascia apparently borrowed from a B-film spacecraft and the Volga’s menacing stance all combine to create a genuinely memorable vehicle.
EHJ 660H is owned by Kiril Vitanov, who dreamed of owning an M21 ever since he was a child in Bulgaria in the 1980s. His father once told him: ‘A black Volga is a car for special people. It is the car of Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space.’ At that time, the traffic in Sofia consisted mainly of imports from the USSR – cars like the Moskvich 412, the VAZ-2101 (better known in the UK as the Lada) and the ZAZ Zaporozhets 968. From time to time you might also encounter Warszawas and Fiats from Poland, Wartburgs from East Germany and Škodas from Czechoslovakia, but seldom a Volga M21.
