Reliant Motor Company was a British car manufacturer based in Tamworth, Staffordshire, England. It was founded in 1935 and ended car production in 2002, the company had been known as "Reliant Motor Company" until the 1990s when it became "Reliant Motors" and then finally became "Reliant cars LTD" after production had ended of the Robin as the company was restructured to be a car import business. It is now a dormant company and the only entity left is a separate parts company created called "Reliant Partsworld" which produces parts for Reliant vehicles.
Autocars Co. Ltd. of Haifa, Israel, was Israel's first car manufacturer.
The automotive industry in the Soviet Union spanned the history of the state from 1929 to 1991. It started with the establishment of large car manufacturing plants and reorganisation of the AMO Factory in Moscow in the late 1920s–early 1930s, during the first five-year plan, and continued until the Soviet Union's dissolution in 1991.
Biotechnia Ellinikon Trikyklon, or BET, was a small vehicle manufacturer founded in Athens by Petros Konstantinou. It was one of several manufacturers - the first appearing in the early 1940s - that converted BMW or other motorcycles into light utility three-wheelers. In 1965 it entirely designed and built a small five-seat passenger car with a BMW 125cc motorcycle engine. Although the type was certified, only one was built due to problems in availability of parts for further production. Following this design, three-wheeled truck models were developed and produced. A second passenger car model was designed and introduced in 1973, known as model 500, with a Fiat 500cc engine. With metal body, seating up to five passengers and featuring very good road handling, it was a rather advanced three-wheeler for its time. It was certified for production and 15 were built, of which one survives to this date in excellent condition. There were even talks with a South African company involving plans for exports or even transfer of production to that country, but they were never realized. The company ceased production in 1975.
MEBEA was an important Greek vehicle manufacturer, producer of light trucks, passenger automobiles, motorcycles, motorbike engines, agricultural machinery and bicycles.
The Sfakianakis group of companies is a Greek conglomerate with a wide range of activities, employing over 2800 in 6 countries in 2014.
STYL KAR was named after its founder, the engineer Stylianos Karakatsanis. Its entire history is representative of many Greek companies who were engaged in the construction of simple utility vehicles.
Alta was a Greek manufacturer of light and heavier three-wheeler trucks, motorcycles and passenger cars. Production of motorcycles and three-wheeler trucks with Sachs 50cc engines started in its first factory in Athens in 1962. The 50S motorcycle model was known for its reliability. In 1967 it designed and developed model A700, a heavier three-wheel truck with 2-cylinder BMW 35 hp engine and a payload of 800 kg. The truck, featuring a pleasant design and high reliability became one of the most successful vehicles of its kind in Greece. In 1968 Alta introduced a three-wheel passenger car, model A200. Powered by a Heinkel 200cc engine, the car was based on the German Fuldamobil, but with Alta's own body design. The company moved production to a new, larger factory in Elefsis where it operated until 1978.
DIM Motor Company, a Greek automobile maker, was created by Georgios Dimitriadis as a successor to his earlier company, Bioplastic S.A., which had produced the Attica automobile. The DIM represented one more effort by Mr. Dimitriadis to design and develop a modern car entirely by his company's own means. A 400cc, air-cooled, 2-cylinder, 30-hp engine was also developed in-house to power the vehicle, but due to delays in the engine development, the car was introduced with a 600cc engine and other mechanical parts of the Fiat 126 model. A 650cc Fiat engine was also used, in an improved version. The car was finally introduced at the Geneva Motor Show in 1977, and for this reason received more publicity than most Greek vehicles, appearing in many international publications. All development work had been made in a factory intended for its production in Acharnes, while the company was advertised in the Greek press; plans were also made for more versions, including a sports coupe. However, the costs involved and the car's poor prospects in the Greek market resulted in termination of production after only about ten had been produced. The whole project was abandoned in 1982, having been Georgios Dimitriadis' last venture in the automotive industry.
NAMCO is a Greek vehicle manufacturer. It was founded in 1972 by Kontogouris brothers.
Pan-Car was a Greek producer of automobiles and light trucks, operating between 1968 and 1994. As was often the case in Greece, its name comes from that of its founder, Panayiotis Caravisopoulos. In 1968 it was one of many Greek companies that produced three-wheeled trucks, using Volkswagen engines. In 1977 it introduced beach buggy models built on Volkswagen chassis, which were produced for several years. In 1992 it introduced a jeep-type automobile, also with Volkswagen mechanicals. The model faced a problem common to such ventures in Greece, i.e., receiving type certification for production. That, and financial problems, forced the company to go out of business in 1994.
AK Hellas was a Greek manufacturer of light trucks and other metal products. It designed and produced two basic types of vehicles - all three-wheelers with 50cc engines, taking advantage of a favorable classification as "motorbikes" according to Greek law. One group of models it produced since 1965 were light trucks with "motorcycle" structure, a type of vehicle also produced in Greece by MEBEA, Mego, Alta, Saracakis, Pitsos, Markal, Naxos and others. The other group of models were "proper" micro-trucks, with "automobile" structure of steering, controls etc. It was in this category that AK Hellas became the biggest truck manufacturer in Greece, leaving behind MEBEA, Delta, Minicar, Zamba and other smaller Greek manufacturers. The company's T200 model, using a Sachs 50cc 4.8 hp engine and with a payload of 150 kg was produced between 1968 and 1975 with three different cab designs and in several versions. According to Dimitrios N. Aggelopoulos, several thousand units were produced, while other branches created by the same entrepreneur, were involved in production of pleasure boats, biological cleaning units, telephone booths, phone switchboards, generating sets, helmets, storage tanks, prefab container houses, wind turbine blades, irrigation systems, etc.
Automeccanica was a Greek automobile producing company. Founded in 1979, it was one of the companies that produced the "passenger-utility" type of vehicle popular in Greece at the time for tax categorization reasons. Its creators were former executives of Autokinitoviomihania Ellados a company founded in 1975 to also produce vehicles of this type – it assembled Italian Fissore models based on Fiat products, as well as other Fiat models and variants. Automeccanica followed a different path, building the Zebra model, a passenger-utility car based on the Daihatsu Charade, as well as assembling the Charade itself. In 1985, when the law favoring the Zebra-type vehicles changed, Automeccanica stopped its production and started licence production of the Soviet Lada Niva model, while it developed its own cabrio-version of the car. In 1988 it acquired its former "father" company, Autokinitoviomihania Ellados and the latter's factory in Thiva. Automeccanica went out of the car-construction business in 1995.
MAVA Company was the Greek importer of Renault automobiles. In 1979, it decided to enter the car-production business introducing a passenger-utility car, a type then very popular in Greece for tax cetagorization reasons. MAVA assigned the creation of the car to Georgios Michael, a Greek designer credited with the design of Neorion Chicago, as well as that of several other Greek vehicles. Michael and his team completed the development and prototype construction in record-time and the car, named Farma, was introduced the same year. MAVA had insisted that the car should be presented as a "Renault model" and thus the prototype was tested and approved by the French company.
Fuldamobil is the name of a series of small cars produced by Elektromaschinenbau Fulda GmbH of Fulda, Germany, and Nordwestdeutscher Fahrzeugbau (NWF) of Wilhelmshaven between 1950 and 1969. Various designated versions of the car were produced, although the vehicles produced under each designation were not always identical and the designations were sometimes misapplied. Though overall numbers produced were relatively small, the cars attracted sufficient attention to see licensed construction on four continents including Europe. In its ultimate configuration it is said to have inspired the term "bubble car". It is acknowledged as the first car in the world to feature a negative scrub radius, now recognised as a major advance in driving safety.
Tropical is a Greek manufacturer involved in machinery and vehicle development and production. Its history is characteristic of a company which has made significant efforts to evolve in a country that effectively forbids production of locally developed passenger cars.
The Dimitriadis model 505 was a Greek microcar developed in 1958 by G. Dimitriadis, founder of the Bioplastic boat and automobile manufacturer. This car represented his first effort in automobile production, and was presented in a number of exhibitions in Greece. According to Mr. Dimitriadis, its production was eventually considered non-profitable compared to that of three-wheelers. Thus, he switched to the licence production of the German Fuldamobil three-wheeler.
The Alta A200 was a three-wheel passenger car introduced in 1968, produced by Alta, a Greek vehicle manufacturer. The car was largely based on the German Fuldamobil, but it was an altogether more modern design. Powered by a Heinkel 200 cc engine, the car had modest success in the Greek market and was soon considered outdated. Produced until 1974, it is often cited as the last derivative of the Fuldamobil and is seen by many as a collectible item.
Autokinitoviomihania Ellados was founded in Athens in 1975 by a group of Greek businessmen, including the owners of the company importing Fiat in Greece.
The automotive industry in Sweden is mainly associated with passenger car manufacturers Volvo Cars and Saab Automobile but Sweden is also home of two of the largest truck manufacturers in the world: AB Volvo and Scania AB. The automotive industry is heavily dependent on export as some 85 percent of the passenger cars and 95 percent of the heavy vehicles are sold outside of Sweden. The automotive industry and its sub-contractors is a major part of Swedish industry. In 2011 around 110,000 people were employed and the export income of 150 billion SEK accounted for 12 per cent of Sweden's export income. During 2009 128,738 passenger cars and 27,698 heavy vehicles were built in Sweden. Koenigsegg is also a famous swedish company which makes some of the fastest cars in the world, but also some of the most expensive. They make cars like:Koenigsegg Jesko, Gemera, 1:One, Agera, Regera etc.
