The GAZ-M20 Pobeda was one of the first Soviet cars of original design and moreover at the front line of a new vogue in automobile design;
[5] only the front
suspension and, partially, the
unitized body were influenced by the 1938
Opel Kapitän (the choice of car may have been influenced by the acquisition of the tooling from Opel's
Rüsselsheim factory as part of the war reparations package for the Soviet side, which also led to the creation of the
Moskvitch 400/420).
[6] It was one of the first cars to introduce
ponton styling with slab sides, preceding many Western manufacturers.
[6] The M20 was the first Soviet car using entirely domestic body dies;
[4] it was designed against wooden bucks,
[4] which suffered warping, requiring last-minute tuning by GAZ factory employees.
[3] The first prototype was ready on November 6, 1944 (for an anniversary of the
October Revolution). A number of parts such as the gearbox and the transmission for the Pobeda (especially the early models) were carried over from the
Ford Model B-based
GAZ-M1 and modernized
GAZ 11-73.