After an unsuccessful demonstration of samples of the two-door KIM-10 car to the leaders of the party and government of the USSR, the Kremlin issued a decree requiring automakers to develop a new four-door body on the KIM chassis. Its design was entrusted to the technical department of GAZ, where the school of body designers was gaining strength. Carrying out this task, the designers of the Gorky plant A. N. Kirillov, Yu. N. Sorochkin, A. M. Zheryadin and their colleagues took the KIM chassis as a basis and installed an original body on it without parts unified with the KIM-10-50, made in the image and likeness of the Opel Kadett.
In the winter of 1940-1941, a life-size wooden model and one running prototype of the car were made in the GAZ experimental workshop. In August 1944, the People's Commissariat issued a decree on the resumption of production of the KIM-10−52 car at the Moscow Avtozapchast plant, the former KIM. To achieve this, a search began for production equipment for the CMM plant at various enterprises. In May and June 1945, work was carried out to prepare the production of KIM-10-52, and a small batch of components for this vehicle was produced.
During a display in the Kremlin on June 19 of post-war models of Soviet automobile factories, I. V. Stalin gave the order to master the production of the Opel Kadett car instead of the KIM-10−52 car.