1912 Gramm truck being tested in St. Petersburg, Russia.
To say Imperial Russia’s auto industry was slow growing is an understatement. St. Petersburg, a city of 2 million people, had an estimated 1,600 private automobiles, which was nonetheless a substantial potion of the countries’ 6,000. Ford alone was going to sell over 150,000 Model Ts in 1913. While Hupmobile, Ford, White, Case, Hudson, Studebaker, Rambler, Overland, Maxwell and Velie were all represented, sales were a trickle, at best. There was a single domestic automaker, Russo-Baltique, in Latvia, whose output was minimal. Everything else was imported, and there wasn’t a lot of it.
| Year | No.imported | $ Value |
| 1902 | 37 | $41,068 |
| 1903 | 71 | |
| 1904 | 115 | $120,484 |
| 1905 | 103 | $118,527 |
| 1906 | 595 | $537,500 |
| 1907 | 1,049 | $1,045,189 |
| 1908 | 1,365 | $1,736,991 |
| 1909 | 1,565 | $1,968,512 |
| 1910 | 2,646 | $3,606,817 |
| 1911 | 3,851 | $5,268,450 |
The Tsar Nicholas wanted to change that. Since 1908, the Imperial Automobile Club had been holding a show in St. Petersburg, but it was a tepid affair, at best. In 1912 they made it an international exhibition and for 1913, they made an all-out diplomatic push for attendees. Russian Ambassador George Bakhmeteff wrote to the American Secretary of State,
Considering the fact that the American type of automobile is the most indicated for country use in Russia, adapting itself more than the machines of European construction to roads not macadamized, the Automobile Club of Russia is keenly interested in seeing the great American manufacturers of motors and automobiles exhibit their new models at St. Petersburg in the spring of 1913.
The Imperial Government, on its part, attaching a very special importance to the development of automobiling in Russia, has granted to exhibitors a tariff for the transportation of exhibits over Russian railways,according to which the return of exhibits from St. Petersburg to the frontier will be effected gratuitously.
Dr. W. Swetchine, aide-de-camp to the Emperor and vice-president of the I. A. C. of R., said,
Russia was later than other countries to take up the automobile and it is only in the last few years that its use has become general. Our reliability trials of 1910, 1911 and 1912 for the Emperor’s prize finally exploded the idea that the Russian roads are unsuitable for automobiles and showed that the country possesses a fine system of excellent highways. These trials also induced the rural population to take an interest in automobiling.
We are convinced that the American cars should suit the Russian demand as there is a great similarity in the automobiling conditions of the two countries. Our vast grain-producing steppes, peopled with landowners and farmers, dependent altogether on horses for means of locomotion, should prove an excellent market for cars and especially for American cars, as in these districts it is noticed that the light and powerful American cars negotiate the sandy tracks quite satisfactorily when the heavier European car finds difficulty in getting through. Unfortunately, up to the present time, the Russian customer has had little opportunity of judging what a really good American car is as few American firms are represented here.
Before the opening of Russia’s international show—everything ready.
Entrance to Automobile Show in St. Petersburg.
Talk about your snapshot of history–in Russia, they had only some cobbled streets, revolution was fomenting and they were just about to go to war with Germany. And they knew it. The Russian Export Association in New York sent around fliers in advertisement of the 1913 show, with 21 suggestions for the types of cars Russians might be interested in:
- Freight cars fitted for carrying military stores.
- Freight cars fitted for transporting aeroplanes.
- Freight cars fitted for radio-telegraph stations.
- Motor cars fitted for radiography stations.
- Searchlight motor cars.
- Field kitchen motor cars.
- Freight wagons fitted for smithy and workshop.
- Tank freight cars.
- Motor cars with armored body for quick-firing guns.
- Sanitary motor cars for carrying wounded and sick (ambulance).
- Motor cars fitted for being used as field surgical operation room.
- Freight cars with appliances for receiving field stretchers with wounded.
- Motor cars with an unarmored gun for firing at aerial craft.
- Motor tractors for fortress artillery.
- Military telegraph motor cars.
- Power plant cars.
- Light motor cars for reconnoitering service.
- Appliances for enabling motor cars to drive through heavy sand.
- Tractor cars, 70-80 horsepower, with three trailers for carrying 30.4 cm. mortars.
- Motor cars with 90 cm. projectors.
- Motor cars with cranes for lifting guns and various heavy loads when going up hill on steep slopes.
They’d need all of that in a matter of months.
Ultimately, His Imperial Majesty the Emperor had complete control of the auto industry in Russia, through his patronage of the Imperial Automobile Club, and he wanted Russia to have cars. The 1913 show was successful, but Russia’s future was not what Nicholas imagined.
Czar Nicholas of Russia and President Poincare of France before the outbreak of hostilities, 1914.
The Romanovs of course had strong French interests, and for a while, it looked as though they’d lured French industry. After the State visit pictured abover, word came in September that a Renault plant was to be started in St. Petersburg and a Delage plant in Moscow. The Tsar’s desire for a domestic industry–and Europe’s desire to access Russia’s 176 million people–was reflected in arrangements that both factories would use only Russian labor and raw materials, helping to bootstrap a pool of skilled workers, and indeed the whole manufacturing chain, and even an entire industrial sector.
Czar, Grand Duke Nicholas and Count Dobrinsky at the front, 1914.
But the days of the Tsars were at an end. The Romanov family had four years to live, years during which the country was consumed by war, their opportunity for the American-style mobility and prosperity envisaged by Nicholas gone, seemingly, forever.
Days of revolution – automobile-sledge of the former Tsar Nikolai II, 1917.
