The very first car produced in Soviet-era Poland after World War II went on display Friday near Warsaw after it was tracked down in Finland during decades of searching and acquired after years of negotiations. The chunky 1951 Warszawa M-20 bears the serial number 000001 it had when it left the FSO Passenger Car Factory in Warsaw on Nov. 6 of that year, exactly 73 years ago.
It is a relic of the period of Poland's post-war subordination to communist-ruled Soviet Union, reports the . "We are extremely proud because now we count among the very few people in the world who have retrieved the very first vehicles of the series made in their countries," said Zbigniew Mikiciuk, a co-founder of the private museum in Otrebusy. The car was first given to the Soviet army marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky, who served as Poland's defense minister after the war to seal the country's dependency to Moscow.
The now-defunct FSO factory intensively sought the original model during the 1970s in hopes of using it to mark an anniversary. The company even offered a new car in exchange for it, at a time when cars were still a luxury in Poland, but no one came forward. It eventually was discovered in the possession of the family of Finnish rally car driver Rauno Aaltonen, though the car's history in between remains unclear, Mikiciuk said.
It took more than two years of negotiations to obtain the vehicle from the Finnish owners, he said. The car's original light color has been painted over with a shade of .