Don't Walk; Wait

Russia's underworked consumers'-goods advertising agency, a sort of low-pressure B.B.D. & Omsk, got a new product to talk about last week. Over Radio Moscow floated the words of a U.S. style commercial: "A new limousine, the Volga, has been built at the Molotov Gorky Motor Works . . . The new car has an unusually broad windshield and a number of gadgets including a clock on the dashboard, a radio and a heater. Everything is well designed and of excellent workmanship . . . far surpasses the Pobeda in elegance of lines and finish and is much roomier. For long-distance travel the middle seat can be lowered to form a bed."

The Volga is the fourth and most advanced of the automobiles designed by Soviet factories for public sale. (A fifth, the ZIS, the big, black limousine modeled after the Packard of 15 years ago, is made to order only for high government use.) It is the first to be offered in a variety of shiny colors (dark blue, pastel green, beige light blue), instead of the usual flat drabs of other Soviet cars, like the Pobeda (built along the lines of an undersized 1939 Ford) and the ZIM (which looks like an elderly Buick). The Volga is also the first to offer such Western frivolities as the automatic shift, one-piece windshield and built-in lubrication system* operated by pushing a pedal. A four-cylinder , 75-h.p., five-passenger sedan, the Volga's design is almost a direct crib of Raymond Loewy's 1954 Studebaker but its price--about $5,000--comes from the upper end of the Cadillac price list. "Trial tests," said Radio Moscow's salesman, "have proved very successful." But the Volga lacks one important feature: availability. Mass production will not begin until 1956.

* Optional, at extra cost, in 1955 Lincolns and Mercurys, old hat in the Rolls-Royce (since 1978) and such other class cars as Mercedes-Benz, Daimler, prewar Packard.

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