manufacturing vehicles to replace the massive losses then being sustained by the Red Army while the rest of the local defence industry was struggling to relocate and reorganise. GAZ increased its manufacture and assembly of light tanks accordingly, as well as continuing to produce military trucks. Since the programme to mass produce a new all-wheel drive armoured car had been interrupted by the German invasion, it also fell to GAZ to investigate possibilities in that regard. GAZ technicians initiated concept work on a new armoured car designated Izdeliye 64-125 on July 17, 1941, basing its construction and design on a preexisting commercial chassis. This was to ensure the manufacturing process could in be undertaken in an economical and rapid manner. After some deliberation, the GAZ-64 jeep was chosen as the base for the Izdeliye 64-125. This chassis was considered ideal due to its short wheel base and excellent ground clearance, and the fact that its mechanical parts were already in serial production. The original Izdeliye 64-125 bore almost no similarities with what would later become the BA-64; it resembled little more than a shorter BA-20. On August 23, a captured German Sd.Kfz. 221 scout car was exhibited near Moscow by the Red Army. Vitaliy Grachev and other GAZ engineers were permitted to inspect the vehicle; a month later Grachev arranged to have it brought to the GAZ factory for a detailed analysis. Grachev was impressed by the highly faceted armour plate on the Sd.Kfz. 221, which was angled for maximum ricochet, and he ordered that a similar hull be incorporated into the Izdeliye 64-125. In late November, GAZ assembled the first three prototypes carrying the new hull. Field trials with the Red Army commenced on January 9, 1942. The Izdeliye 64-125 was accepted for service as the BA-64 on March 14, 1942. The BA-64 was initially armed with a single 7.62mm Degtyaryov machine gun in an open-topped turret. The machine gun was mounted on a fixed mount that allowed it to be elevated sufficiently to engage low-flying aircraft. BA-64s started being issued in large numbers to Soviet units in early 1943. Around the same time a specialist driving school was set up to train BA-64 drivers. For reasons still unclear, only fifty armoured cars of this type were manufactured in 1942 and mass production was not undertaken until the first six months of 1943, when over a thousand were manufactured.