Russo-Balt: The Cars of the Russo-Baltic Wagon Factory, 1909 to 1915

Before DARTZ, Riga had a carmaker of its own. Its cars went to the imperial court, to Monte Carlo and to war.

1907: a carriage works decides to build cars

The Russo-Baltic Wagon Factory, RBVZ, had built railway carriages in Riga since 1869. In 1907 it decided to build cars. For the prototype it took a Belgian car, the Fondu, and because all the correspondence was in French, the new department was called the Division Automobile de Riga: D.A.R.

1909: the first Russo-Balt

The first car, the C24/30, left the works in 1909, with the Swiss engineer Julien Potterat, the department’s chief designer, at the wheel.

A smaller K12/20 followed, then the C24/40 and faster versions, trucks for the army and a fire engine. By 1915 about 625 cars had been built in Riga.

A warrant from the Tsar

In 1912 RBVZ became a supplier to the court of Emperor Nicholas II, and, DARTZ records, from then on its cars could carry the Russian imperial eagle. The same year the works began supplying cars to the army, which tested them against the best foreign makes. The Tsar’s own garage used Russo-Balts, among them a C24/40 fitted with Adolphe Kégresse’s half-track. Read Kégresse’s story.

Winning on the road

Russo-Balts raced, too. In 1912 André Nágel drove a C24/55 from St Petersburg to Monaco for the Monte Carlo Rally and arrived first; the judges placed him ninth, but he won the endurance award. He also drove a Russo-Balt up Vesuvius, and the cars ran in the Russian Grand Prix of 1913. Read Nágel’s story.

To war, and away from Riga

The works built armoured cars, which DARTZ dates to 1912, and armoured Russo-Balts fought in the First World War. In the autumn of 1915, as German forces approached Riga, the automobile works were evacuated east, to Fili near Moscow. The Riga chapter was over. Read what became of the Fili works.

What survives

Very few Russo-Balts survive. A K12/20 is in the Polytechnical Museum in Moscow, and a 1912 fire engine on the Type D chassis is in the Riga Motor Museum. The name lives on differently: in 1988 the great-grandson of one of the works’ shareholders revived its heritage in Riga, and took the first letters of Division Automobile de Riga for his company’s name, DARTZ.