Start with what the GAZ-21 is: a 4-door saloon (GAZ-21, GAZ-23) / 5-door wagon (GAZ-22) with 2.5 , built from 1956 to 1970, at the height of the post-war boom. What it meant takes a little longer.
How it came about
The GAZ M21 Volga is an automobile produced in the Soviet Union by GAZ (Gorkovsky Avtomobilniy Zavod, in English "Gorky Automobile Factory") from 1956 to 1970. The first car to carry the Volga name, it was developed in the early 1950s.
Volgas were built with high ground clearance (which gives it a specific "high" look, contrary to "low-long-sleek" look of Western cars of similar design), rugged suspension, strong and forgiving engine, and rustproofing on a scale unheard of in the 1950s. The Volga was stylistically in line with the major American manufacturers of the period in which it was introduced, and incorporated such then-luxury features as the reclining front seat, cigarette lighter, heater, windshield washer and three-wave radio. The GAZ M-21 Volga became the biggest and most luxurious car officially sold to individual owners in the USSR in large quantities; though its very high price made it unavailable for most car buyers, 639,478 cars were produced in total.
The hardware
The engine is 2.5 other versions carried different engines, listed in the specification table below. On the scales it comes to 1460-1523 kg. Drive goes through a 3-speed automatic (initially) / 3-speed manual. The wheelbase is 2700 mm. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Family and rivals
In the GAZ line-up the GAZ-21 has a clear place: it replaced the GAZ-M20 Pobeda; it handed the line to the GAZ-24 Volga; the factory was Gorky. The cars a buyer would have weighed it against include the Fiat 500, the Nissan Skyline, the Mercedes-Benz 300 SL. Its GAZ stablemates include the Chaika and the GAZ 24-24.
Owning one today
There is no federal ownership record for the GAZ-21 — it predates the complaint database or was never sold in the United States — so MotorJury publishes no running-cost figure for it. For a car of this age the price is set by the collector market and the condition of the individual example, not by a formula.