Maskinfabriks-aktiebolaget Scania
1903 Scania bicycle, fitted with an engine
connected by a leather belt. |
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| Industry | |
|---|---|
| Fate | Merged with Vabis, to create Scania-Vabis |
| Founded | 1900 |
| Defunct | 1911 |
| Headquarters | Malmö, Sweden |
Maskinfabriks-aktiebolaget Scania (Maskinfabriks AB Scania), translates Machine Factory Limited Company Scania, was a Swedish bicycle manufacturer established in Malmö in 1900. The company rapidly expanded to manufacture other products like precision gears, vacuum cleaners, automobiles, trucks and engines. The company was in 1911 merged with Vabis, to form Scania-Vabis.
British bicycle manufacturer Humber & Co had set up a Swedish subsidiary in Malmö in 1896. In 1900, Humber moved their operations to , which led to local entrepreneurs taking over the Malmö workshop, initially manufacturing the same as before. The new company was named after Scania, the old Latin name of the region that is locally known as Skåne.
The first automobile prototypes were built in 1901, the Scania A1, with production starting in 1903 and soon also trucks. The company built their first industrial engine in 1905, a 24-hp 4-cylinder water pump engine for the Stockholm fire brigade. By 1908, when the company had sold some 70 automobiles, built with engines, gearboxes and other parts imported from France and Germany, they started making their own engines.
It is considered that the first ever occasion that a Scania truck was transported out of Sweden was for the first international auto show at Akershus Fortress in Norway's capital Kristiania on 20 May 1909. The display included a truck of type IL, a 3-tonne truck built between 1908 and 1910, and an engine, but neither were sold, and returned back to Malmö. The first export sale of a Scania truck happened in 1910, when the city of Saint Petersburg in Russia needed a cable repair truck for its tramway.
As a marketing stunt the same year, a group of six representatives from the factory set off from Malmö with a type E truck loaded with 1.8 tonnes of cargo with the auto show in Stockholm as their destination, a trip that took them three days. To avoid any risk of a flat tyre, the truck was fitted with massive rubber tyres. This 520-kilometre trip is considered the first long-distance truck transport in Sweden ever, and was considered at the time as a major achievement.
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