The story of the Packard-like ZIS 110/115 Limousine was covered by my Swedish co-author Håkan Sjöholm and me in the April 2020 issue of Classic American. Before that car ceased production, Russian designers were looking to its successor model. What was in effect an adapted pre-war American design, and one from the early Forties, was looking very outdated by the mid-Fifties, from both its mechanical specification as well as its overall design. American car design had really moved on rapidly after a period where most manufacturers, Studebaker and Kaiser-Frazer excepted, were only producing slightly modified pre-war designs in the years immediately after the Second World War.
So, what followed after the ZIS 110/115? This then is the story of two different Russian limousines, built in different factories, but both with clear Packard influences: The ZIL 111 and variants replacing the ZIS 110/115 – and a development of the short-lived ZIS 111 – (see below) and the GAZ 13 Chaika Limousine, replacing the GM-inspired GAZ 12 ZIM Limousine. The design theme common to both cars was its 1955/56 Packard-like front clip. However, as in the case of the previous ZIS 110/115 models, beyond that
