Iveco

IVECO S.p.A. is an Italian transport vehicle manufacturing company based in Turin and a wholly owned subsidiary of CNH Industrial. It designs and builds light, medium and heavy commercial vehicles, quarry/construction site vehicles, city and intercity buses and special vehicles for applications such as firefighting, off-road missions, the military and civil defence. The name Iveco first appeared in 1975 after a merger of Italian, French and German brands. Its production plants are in Europe, Brazil, Russia, Australia, Africa, Argentina and China, and it has approximately 5,000 points of sales and service in over 160 countries. The worldwide output of the company amounts to around 150,000 commercial vehicles with a turnover of about €10 billion.

History

IVECO was incorporated on 1 January 1975, with the merger of five different brands: FIAT Veicoli Industriali (with headquarters in Turin), OM (Brescia, Italy), Lancia Veicoli Speciali (Italy), Unic (France) and Magirus-Deutz (Germany).

Following the merger, the newly founded Iveco began rationalizing its product range, manufacturing plants and sales network, while keeping the original brands. From 1975 to 1979, the Iveco range included 200 basic models and 600 versions spanning from 2.7 tons of GVW for a light vehicle to over 40 tons for heavy vehicles, as well as buses and engines. In 1977 the light to medium-weight Iveco Zeta range was introduced, replacing the twenty-year-old OM Lupetto. Integrating the FIAT-OM range with the Unic and Magirus lineups was completed by 1980. IVECO moved in to work on increasing productivity and engine development. In 1978 IVECO launched the first product in the range of Iveco-branded light vehicles, the Daily.

In 1980 Iveco built a turbo diesel engine for heavy industrial vehicles. In this decade the corporate strategy was heavily oriented towards brand promotion and led to the sponsorship of sports events, such as the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow, the Davis Cup in 1982, multiple championship boxing matches, the Jacques Cousteau expeditions in the Amazon basin in 1983 and the Raid Pigafetta, during which the IVECO-FIAT 75 PC 4x4 was first to make a full circle of the globe. Two new divisions were also formed: bus diesel engines and firefighting vehicles.

In 1984 IVECO launched the TurboStar, a heavy on-road vehicle that became a best-seller in Italy and also successful in the European market, selling a total of 50,000 in seven years.

In 1985 IVECO made the first light diesel engine with direct injection.

From 1986, IVECO S.p.A. held a 52% stake in Iveco Ford Truck Ltd, a joint venture (and effectively a merger) with Ford of Europe's truck division. Ford plants took over production and sales of the major vehicles in the Iveco range and continued production of the Ford Cargo. In the mid-1980s, Astra, which produces dumpers and construction site/quarry vehicles in Piacenza, became part of Iveco Group.

In 1989 the first diesel engine with EGR to reduce polluting emissions compatible with commercial vehicles was produced and the new Daily launched that same year was fitted with it.

In 1990, the group purchased 60% control of the Spanish industrial company ENASA, which owned the industrial vehicle builder Pegaso. In the 1990s, the EuroCargo, EuroTech, EuroTrakker and EuroStar vehicles represented a total facelift for the range. The EuroCargo and the EuroTech were named "Truck of the Year" in 1992 and 1993 respectively and, for the first time, this recognition was awarded to the same manufacturer for two years in a row. The English company Seddon Atkinson was purchased in 1991 and brought its long heritage of special vehicles for the construction and refuse collection industries. That same year, the first TurboDaily assembly line was inaugurated at the Nanjing Motor Corporation in China. In 1991 Iveco announced that they were withdrawing from the North American market at the end of the calendar year; they had been selling the mid-range Iveco Euro there since 1978.

In 1992, Iveco took over the primary constructor of industrial vehicles in Australia to form Ital, originally called International Trucks Australia.[20] In 2000 it was renamed Iveco Trucks Australia Limited. In 1996 firefighting activities in Germany were structured under the company Iveco Magirus Brandschutztechnik GmbH. The following year, these activities were boosted by the arrival of an Austrian company, Löhr, which then became Löhr Magirus.

In 1998 Cursor 8 was launched, followed the next year by Cursor 10, the first diesel engine with a variable geometry turbine and the first common rail diesel engine for heavy industrial vehicles. The 125th anniversary of the presentation of the first Magirus ladder was celebrated together with the delivery of the five-thousandth Magirus aerial ladder produced since the Second World War.

In 2003 IVECO entirely bought out Irisbus, originally part of a joint venture with Renault. In 2004 the Iveco Motors brand was born, which became an umbrella for the production of engines, and the following year it was incorporated into the newly founded Fiat Powertrain Technologies. At the end of 2004, an agreement was reached between IVECO and the Chinese company SAIC (Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation).

In 2006 IVECO sponsored the Winter Olympic Games in Turin with a fleet of 1,200 Irisbus buses. The year after, IVECO became sponsor of the All Blacks, New Zealand's rugby team. In 2009 Iveco became the trucks and commercial Vehicle supplier for the Moto GP, together with the historical sponsorship to the Ferrari Racing Team, for which it supplies the vehicles that transport the single-seaters at all the Formula 1 World Championship races.

On 1 January 2011, Fiat Industrial was formed, incorporating CNH, Iveco and FPT Industrial. In September of the same year, the Fiat Industrial Village was inaugurated in Turin, a multipurpose centre belonging to Fiat Industrial and created for the sales, assistance and product presentation for the Iveco, New Holland and FPT Industrial brands. On 15 January 2012, Iveco won the 33rd edition of the Dakar rally with the Petronas De Rooy team and the Dutch driver Gerard De Rooy, behind the wheel of an Iveco Powerstar. De Rooy was followed by drivers Stacey and Biasion behind the wheel of two Iveco Trakker Evolution 2 vehicles, equipped with an FPT Industrial C13 engine with over 900 hp.