Iconic car with amazing WW2 history left abandoned & rotting for 70 YEARS is given new lease of life
THIS CLASSIC car was revived after being abandoned and left to rot for 70 years.
The motor was made during Soviet-era Poland and has finally gone back on display.
This Warszawa M-20 went on show on November 01 after it was tracked down in tracked down in Finland.
After decades of searching for the 1951 model it was saved and now is on public display in a private museum in Otrebusy, central Poland.
Co-founder of the museum Zbigniew Mikiciuk said: “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.
“We have been doing this for more than 50 years and we are not collecting cars you can see in the street but cars that have their history, their soul and their legend,”
With a serial number of 000001 this was the first motor to leave a car factory in Poland after World War II, making it a very unique model.
It’s original colour has been covered up with a specific shade of brown that was deemed particularly fashionable in the 1970s.
Mikiciuk said despite it’s age, the motor is holding together and is still ‘incredibly cool.’
It’s had a few scrapes but the museum has decided to keep the marks visible so to preserve the vehicles authenticity.
The car was made in the FSO Passenger Car Factory in Warsaw which was a factory originally build it the late 1940s to produce Italian Fiat 508.
However Soviet leaders wanted to cut ties with a Western company during the Cold war and ordered for the production to be based on the Soviet Union’s cars.
The car serves as more than just a collector for petrolheads but also offers a piece of Polish history.
It was first given to Soviet army marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky who was Poland’s defense minister after the war.
After many years it was discovered to be owned by the family of Finnish rally car driver Rauno Aaltonen.
It’s unclear what happened to the stylish motor inbetween.
Now the vehicle joins a succession of valuable cars in the museum, many of which have their own story.
A Volvo owned by Poland’s community leader, Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, stands next to the Warszawa M-20.