ZAZ Logo

A Dutch workshop on the Dnipro

ZAZ was building things a century before it built a car. In 1863 a Dutch colonist, Abraham Koop, opened a workshop for farm machinery in Schoenwiese, a Mennonite settlement that is now part of industrial Zaporizhzhia. Ploughs, windmill parts, mills. By 1929 the plant, nationalised in 1920 and renamed Kommunar in 1921, had produced the first Soviet-built combine harvester.

The war sent the whole factory east to Krasnoyarsk. It came back, and in November 1958 the Soviet Council of Ministers decided that the combine plant would become a car plant. The brief was simple: a small, cheap people’s car, and the starting point was the Fiat 600. Moscow engineers had already reworked the idea into a prototype called the Moskvich-444; Zaporizhzhia turned it into the ZAZ-965.

The name came from the top. On 18 July 1960 the car was shown to Nikita Khrushchev in the Kremlin, who drove it, approved it and insisted the price stay within reach of workers. That day it was christened Zaporozhets, after the city. The first batch left the line on 22 November 1960. The engines came from Melitopol, where a motor plant founded in 1908 still belongs to ZAZ today.

The humpback and the big-eared one

Ukrainians called the ZAZ-965 the Gorbaty, the humpback, for its rounded rear-engined body. Abroad it was sold as the Yalta, dressed up with mirrors, chrome and a radio. A version adapted for disabled drivers followed in 1961. By 1976 a million Zaporozhets cars had been made.

The 965 gave way to the ZAZ-966 and then the 968 and 968M, nicknamed the Ushasty, the big-eared one. The last Zaporozhets, a 968M, left the Zaporizhzhia line on 15 July 1994.

What the ZAZ badge shows

ZAZ has never published an explanation of its emblems, so what follows is what the cars themselves and the motoring press tell us.

The very first Zaporozhets wore a red star. When the improved ZAZ-965A arrived in October 1962, the Ukrainian site InfoCar notes that the star was replaced by a rectangular factory badge. That badge, the one most people remember on the 966 and 968, carried the letters ЗАЗ above an odd silver pattern on a red field. Some owners saw railway tracks in it, others the front of an apartment block. The motoring press in Ukraine and Russia identifies it as the Dnipro hydroelectric dam, DniproHES, the landmark of Zaporizhzhia. It is the most common reading, and a convincing one, but it does not come from ZAZ itself, so treat it as a well-founded theory rather than a statement from the maker.

The emblem used today, as shown on ZAZ’s official site, is a rounded silver shield with a swept, flowing shape across its centre and the ZAZ wordmark beneath it. Again, ZAZ gives no official reading of the shape.

From Soviet red to plain silver

The 1960s star and the dam badge were red with silver or white detail, the standard palette of Soviet industry. The present emblem drops colour altogether: a silver shield and a dark grey wordmark.

From Zaporozhets to Lanos

For nearly thirty years ZAZ meant one car family: the rear-engined Zaporozhets. Then came the front-wheel-drive Tavria, the first ZAZ with a liquid-cooled engine, and after the Soviet collapse the plant survived by building other people’s designs under its own badge.

Landmark ZAZ cars, decade by decade

• 1960: ZAZ-965 Zaporozhets. The humpback, a Fiat 600-inspired rear-engined minicar whose first batch was built on 22 November 1960.
• 1962: ZAZ-965A. The improved model with an 887 cc engine, built until May 1969 and exported as the Yalta.
• 1987: ZAZ-1102 Tavria. A front-wheel-drive hatchback with a Melitopol engine, the last car of ZAZ’s own design; its Slavuta liftback derivative ran until 2011.
• 1994: ZAZ-968M. The final Zaporozhets, the last of which left the line on 15 July 1994.
• 1998: Lanos. Built under the AvtoZAZ-Daewoo joint venture signed in March 1998, it later became the ZAZ Lanos.
• 2012: ZAZ Vida. A rebadged Korean design that went on sale in Ukraine on 13 March 2012.

The 1998 joint venture with Daewoo, with General Motors partly involved, brought Lanos, Nubira and Leganza assembly to Zaporizhzhia. In 2003 the company was renamed the Zaporizhzhia Automobile Building Plant, and today it belongs to the UkrAVTO group. Bankruptcy proceedings opened in December 2018, but the plant has carried on, modernised, according to its own site, to Groupe Renault production standards, and building its ZAZ A08 buses. If you enjoy badges with a story to tell, see how car logos are designed.

Frequently asked questions

What does the ZAZ logo mean?

ZAZ has not published an official meaning. The current emblem is a silver shield with a swept shape across it and the ZAZ wordmark below. The classic 1960s to 1980s badge showed the letters ЗАЗ above a silver pattern that the motoring press identifies as the Dnipro hydroelectric dam near the plant.

What does ZAZ stand for?

Zaporizkyi Avtomobilebudivnyi Zavod, the Zaporizhzhia Automobile Building Plant. The city gave the first car its name too: Zaporozhets.

When was ZAZ founded?

The plant traces its origins to 1863, when Abraham Koop opened a farm-machinery workshop in what is now Zaporizhzhia. It became an automobile plant in 1958 and built its first cars, the ZAZ-965, in 1960.

Is ZAZ still making cars?

The company is active and part of the UkrAVTO group. Its own passenger-car designs ended with the Slavuta in 2011; since then it has assembled partner brands’ cars and builds its ZAZ A08 buses.

The Zaporozhets dossier

Founded

1863

Founder

Abraham Koop (original workshop)

Country

Ukraine

Headquarters

Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine

Parent company

UkrAVTO

Current emblem

A rounded silver shield with a swept shape across its centre and the ZAZ wordmark below

Known for

The Zaporozhets minicar, the Tavria and the ZAZ Lanos

Website

Official website ↗