Rocar
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| Public company | |
| Industry | Bus manufacturing |
| Founded | 1951 |
| Defunct | 2002 |
| Headquarters | Bucharest, Romania |
| Products | Buses, trolleybuses, vans |
Rocar (also T.V. or Autobuzul) was a van, light truck, bus and trolleybus manufacturer based in Bucharest, Romania. The firm begun manufacturing light offroad vehicles and later heavy road vehicles, the lighter vehicles were usually based on original ARO components, parts and ARO running gear.
UATV or Uzina Autobuzul Tudor Vladimirescu company based at Bucharest was created in 1951, and the first production lines were made for rolling-stock equipment and agricultural machinery. From the 1960s much of UATV motorvehicle production was very similar to USSR and East European vehicles with heavy use of domestic parts like components and mechanicals sourced from other Romanian manufacturers like ARO, Brasov, DAC, SR. Starting with light to medium forward control commercial range mostly based on the Russian UAZ company which explains the availability of offroad vehicles soon enough with heavy development shared with ARO.
In 1956 the first bus was built on a truck frame and in 1957 the production program was enlarged also for trolleybuses, mini-buses and pick-ups made after the own design of Rocar. Beginning with 1968, Rocar started exporting vehicles in Eastern Europe, Africa, South America and Middle East and, in 1971, it bought a license from MAN, Germany.During the 80's and early 90's ROCAR made some exports to the Soviet Union and Bulgaria. After 1990, Rocar had a cooperation with the bodywork company De Simon from Italy. During the 80's, ROCAR issued a lot of prototypes, but very few of them went into series production. Also, with few exceptions, ROCAR ( then Autobuzul) vehicles were almost omnipresent in Romania in the domain of persons transport vehicles and light to medium weight charges, as imports were banned in Romania. This situation will change after 1990 with the fall of communism in Romania. During the '80s due to harsh economy and shortages, the quality of ROCAR ( Autobuzul) products, decreased a lot, only export vehicles were of better quality.
In the '90s, ROCAR lost most of its customers (urban transport companies), mainly because of low quality, low production capacity, and high prices, lack of exports therefore many of their former customers bought second hand buses and trolleybuses from west, leading ROCAR to high losses towards the end of the '90s and early 2000s when it went bankrupt. Because of massive second hand bus import in Romania, the company faced difficulties in the late '90s and was struggling to survive mainly due to low demand, however they launched a low floor bus and low floor trolleybus (in cooperation with Autodromo BusOTTO) named 812, but because of low capacity production of the factory and high price, it proved unattractive. ROCAR lost many employees between 1990 and 2002, either retired or found another job (in RATB, Truck & Bus services, car service, etc.) . Between 1990 and 2002, very few exports were made, demand was very low even in Romania.
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Wikipedia