GAZ-69

thumb|right|GAZ-69A thumb|GAZ-69A rear The GAZ-69 is a Soviet four-wheel drive off-road vehicle produced by GAZ (ГАЗ, or Gorkovsky Avtomobilnyi Zavod, Gorky Automobile Factory) between 1953 and 1956 and then by UAZ between 1956 and 1972, though all of these light truck class vehicles were known as GAZ-69s. It was also produced in Romania until 1975.

==Development and production== The GAZ-69 was created by the team of chief designer Grigoriy Vasserman as a replacement for the GAZ-67B that would have lower fuel consumption than its predecessor and use the same inline four and three-speed transmission as the GAZ-M20 Pobeda. The axles and some other parts were taken from the GAZ-67B. The development process started in 1946 and the first prototypes known under the name "Truzhenik" (Toiler) were built in 1947. After extensive on-road testing, the new off-road vehicle went into production on August 25, 1953. Over 600,000 GAZ-69s had been built by the end of production in the USSR in 1972. A copy of the GAZ-69 with some modifications was produced by ARO in Romania until 1975, first as the IMS-57, then heavily redesigned as the IMS M59, and later modernized as the ARO M461. GAZ-69s were standard military jeeps of the Eastern Bloc and client states, except Romania that mainly used the locally built ARO models.