LAZ-695

LAZ-695 at a glance: what kind of bus it is

The LAZ-695 is a high-floor, two-axle bus about 9.2 metres long, used on town routes, suburban lines and short intercity runs. Its engine sits at the rear and drives the rear wheels. The body is self-supporting, so there is no separate heavy chassis frame, which kept the bus light and the floor free of a long propeller shaft.

The plant's own story is told in the history of the Lviv Bus Plant, and every LAZ model in our catalogue is listed on the LAZ brand page.

How the LAZ-695 was developed

The Lviv plant was built after the Second World War. It began production in 1949 with trucks, vans and mobile kiosks, not buses. In March 1955 the ministry in charge of the automotive industry ordered prototypes of a rear-engined city bus for 50 people, 30 of them seated. The plant had been expected to build an older design, the ZIS-155. Its young engineering team chose to design a new bus of its own instead, and the authorities approved it.

West German buses served as benchmarks, in particular the Mercedes-Benz O 321 and Magirus-Deutz models. The first prototype was finished on 12 February 1956 and named "Lviv". Seven prototypes were built before series production. Early versions had a narrow interior and small doors, and the rear engine tended to overheat. A suburban prototype from summer 1957 carried an "L" emblem, which became the LAZ badge, and a tourist prototype from December 1957 grew into the separate LAZ-697.

About 100 early buses were ordered for the World Festival of Youth and Students in summer 1957, which gave the first version its nickname, "Festival". Roughly 1,000 had been built when the original 695 gave way to the 695B in 1958.

Body, chassis and engineering

The body is a welded, self-supporting structure. The first 695 used aluminium panels to save weight; the 695B switched to steel because the light body was not stiff enough. Front and rear axles hang on leaf springs. The front axle is a forged I-beam with telescopic dampers. The rear axle has a two-stage final drive: a spiral bevel main gear plus reduction gears in the wheel hubs. From the 695M onwards these hub-reduction rear axles came from Rába in Hungary.

According to the old 1cars text, the 695N's springs work in two stages, so a soft main leaf handles an empty bus and extra leaves come into play under load. Steering is a worm-and-roller mechanism; power assistance arrived with the 695M. The brakes are drums on all wheels with a dual-circuit air system, a twin-cylinder water-cooled compressor and five air reservoirs, one of which has a valve for inflating tyres. The parking brake works mechanically on the rear wheels.

Inside the 695N there are four rows of seats, two four-leaf passenger doors and a separate driver's door. Heating uses warm water from the engine cooling system. The early versions could be converted into ambulances by taking out the seats; the old 1cars text notes a side door next to the driver for loading stretchers.

Engines and gearbox by version

Every LAZ-695 has a petrol engine except the late diesel versions. Sources differ on the output of the first two versions, so the table shows the range given.

The V8 comes from the ZIL-130 truck family. It has a carburettor and a compression ratio of 7.1:1, and it was the bus's main weakness. LAZ data for the 695N give 41 litres per 100 km at full weight; the old 1cars text puts typical use at 35–40 litres. Petrol also cost more than diesel, so fleets turned to the gas-powered 695NG during the fuel shortages of the late 1980s and 1990s.

The gearbox is a five-speed manual with synchromesh on second to fifth gear, borrowed from the ZIL range. The clutch is a dry single-plate unit with hydraulic release. An automatic hydrodynamic transmission was tried on about 40 buses (LAZ-695Zh) between 1963 and 1965, but it never reached series production.

LAZ-695N specifications in metric and imperial units

LAZ-695 versions from Festival to Tanya

Export versions of the 695N were offered for temperate (695NE) and tropical climates (695NT). For the 1980 Summer Olympics LAZ built a run of 3,448 buses with two-section doors.

How to tell the versions apart

The roofline is the quickest clue. The 695 and 695B have curved roof glass and a large air scoop above the rear window, while the 695E brought the V8 and new wheel arches in 1964. The 695M dropped the roof windows, flattened the roof and moved the engine air intakes to the sides. The 695N is easy to spot from the front: a flatter nose and a taller windscreen. Early 695N buses had rectangular headlights from East Germany, later ones round lights.

Compared with its main rival, the LiAZ-677 city bus of 1967, the 695N is about 1,350 mm shorter (9,220 mm against 10,565 mm) at the same 2,500 mm width. It also kept a manual gearbox and leaf springs, while the LiAZ had a hydromechanical automatic and air suspension. The LAZ was simpler, cheaper to run on rough suburban roads and easier to repair.

In service: reliability and legacy

Drivers and depots valued the 695 for its tough, easily repaired mechanicals. It worked on routes of up to about 100 km as well as in towns, and for decades it was one of the most common buses in smaller cities across the Soviet Union and its neighbours. The weak points were the thirsty petrol V8, a hot engine bay, cramped entrances on the early versions and a noisy interior.

Its production span is the bus's real record. In our longest-produced models ranking the LAZ-695 is ranked #14 by production span among all catalogue models, with 47 calendar years from 1956 to 2002. After 2002 the plant in Dniprodzerzhynsk (now Kamianske) took over the 695N, 695D and 695NG under the DAZ name. It built complete buses until about 2008 and bodies for spare parts for a few years after that. Its intended successor, the diesel LAZ-4202 with an automatic gearbox, suffered from poor build quality and never fully replaced it.

Buying and preserving a LAZ-695 today

Surviving LAZ-695 buses are popular with museums and bus-club enthusiasts, and a few still work in villages and small towns. Most of the survivors are 695N buses from the 1980s and 1990s; early 695 and 695B examples with curved roof glass are rare and the most sought after.

Our verdict for collectors: the 695N is the one to buy if you want to drive and use the bus, because parts for the ZIL V8 and the gearbox remain easy to find. An early 695B or 695E is the choice for a museum-grade restoration, but expect to make body panels and glass. Check these points first:

• corrosion in the body frame around the door openings, the rear engine bay and the floor;
• the rear axle hub reduction gears and the leaf springs;
• the air brake system, its compressor and the five reservoirs;
• engine cooling, since overheating was a known fault of the rear layout.

Other vehicles of the same era are collected in our Soviet classics section, including the UAZ-452 minibus and van.