Iveco

IVECO is leading European truck, bus, and diesel engine manufacturer based in Turin, Italy. It is a subsidiary of the Fiat Group, and produces around 200,000 commercial vehicles and 460,000 diesel engines annually, and for the year ended 2003 the company had €8,440 million in sales (revenues).

The name is an acronym for Industrial VEhicle COrporation, an alliance among leading European commercial vehicle manufacturers such as Fiat (including Officine Meccaniche and Lancia VI), Unic and Magirus.

Today the company is a leading player in the medium-duty commercial vehicle and engine markets, it is also near the top for sales of passenger transport, and is one of the leaders in the 3.5 ton light vehicle segment.

History

The company is dominated by Fiat Group, and was created in 1975 by the merger of five companies operating in Italy, France and Germany; Fiat Veicoli Industriali (located in Turin), OM (Brescia), Lancia Veicoli Speciali (Bolzano), Unic (Trappes) and Magirus (Ulm). Numerous important steps have marked its evolution since then.

In its early years, the company focused on rationalizing, integrating and optimizing the various manufacturing and commercial structures that had been independent until then, and the first centralized functional structure emerged. From a marketing viewpoint, these years saw the launch of the Daily (1978), the Turbo (1981) and the Turbostar (1984), three vehicles that symbolized Iveco's entrepreneurial success in Europe.

Iveco had to overcome a crisis in the early 1990s, a new period of change began, fuelled by increasingly fierce competition. In order to respond more effectively to the growing specialization of the market, Iveco broke its structure down into specialist corporate units that addressed specific customers divided by product type. In those years, the company continued to boost its strategic presence in the world. In 1992 Iveco purchased the Ital company, International Trucks Australia Limited, which still plays a very important role in the Pacific Rim. And Iveco Mercosul was created in Brazil in 1997, an essential base for manufacturing and distribution operations all over South America.