Soviet engineers were known not only as professionals in their field, but also as people with imagination. Indeed, sometimes, in an attempt to find a solution to another burning issue, they resorted to the help of ingenuity and creativity. Therefore, it is not surprising that when the task was set to provide the Soviet people with affordable snowmobiles, the designers decided to take a snowmobile as a basis … a car. Yes, not just any, but a whole "Victory".
After the end of the Great Patriotic War, aerosanotechnology turned out to be in some oblivion - for almost fifteen years new models of products that were so necessary for the northern regions of the Soviet state were not produced. Therefore, when in the late 1950s it was decided to create a new snowmobile, it was received not only with enthusiasm, but also with great enthusiasm.
Ultimately, the idea was brought to life by specialists from the helicopter design bureau of N. I. Kamov in 1959. The snowmobile turned out to be very unusual: in fact, they were a kind of hybrid of a Pobeda passenger car with skis and an aircraft engine. In total, in the same 1959, one hundred units of the new model were built.
Interesting fact: despite the fact that the name of the snowmobile got almost immediately - "Sever-2" - it soon changed. Over time, the "deuce" from the name "dropped out", and people began to call the snowmobile simply "North".
According to the surviving data on the technical characteristics of the snowmobile, their average mileage of the “North” snowmobile was 12-15 thousand kilometers per year, the average speed was 30-35 km / h for postal routes. The power of the air engine was 260 horsepower.
Already in 1959-1960, the first series of the "Sever" snowmobiles was distributed at the station to operate on regular passenger and mail flights along the Amur, Ob, Pechora and Lena rivers - that is, in the regions of Siberia, the Far East of Russia and Kazakhstan.
However, the history of such an unusual transport was short-lived. Already in 1961, it was decided to curtail the production of snowmobiles. The main problem of "Sever" turned out, ironically, in "Pobeda": the body of a passenger car, which consists of thin steel sheets, was clearly not adapted for the harsh conditions in which it was operated as the main element of a snowmobile.
As a result, after several months after the distribution of "Severs" at the station, the workers of the latter began to complain about the insufficient volume of the body for the mail cargo, its fragility, problems with the chassis and many other design flaws.
After the withdrawal from production, the snowmobile quickly moved away from work in the North. And the unsuitable body material became the reason that almost all samples of this non-trivial transport were killed. The only known extant copy of "North" today is part of the exposition of the Monino Museum of the Air Force.
Continuing the theme: today, the legendary Soviet car also does not go unnoticed - Tuning "Victory", or How a rarity was turned into an SUV in just a year