Start with what the Volga is: a 4-door saloon/sedan / 5-door estate/wagon (GAZ-22) with 2,445 , built from 1956 to 1970, at the height of the post-war boom. What it meant takes a little longer. The shape is credited to Lev Yeremeev.
The story
The Volga (Russian: Волга) is an executive car that originated in the Soviet Union to replace the GAZ Pobeda in 1956. Their role in serving the Soviet nomenklatura made them a contemporary cultural icon. Several generations of the car have been produced.
Despite the continuous modernisations, GAZ found it increasingly difficult to keep the ageing design competitive in a market economy. GAZ's then-CEO Bo Andersson decided to discontinue the Volga range in 2010. Following Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 with western car brands leaving Russia Volga was reintroduced in 2024 as a brand for Chinese cars locally assembled by GAZ-owned Passenger Cars Production company.
What is underneath
The engine is 2,445 other versions carried different engines, listed in the specification table below. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Its place in the line
In the GAZ line-up the Volga has a clear place: it replaced the GAZ-M20 Pobeda; 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. Nearby in the GAZ catalogue sit the Chaika and the GAZ 24-24.
Owning one today
MotorJury scores cars on the United States complaint and recall record, and the Volga has none: too old, too rare, or never sold there. Its value today is a collector's question, decided by provenance and condition rather than by a class average.
Volga K50 
Volga Siber