Samsung Commercial Vehicles

Samsung Commercial Vehicles Co., Ltd.

Native name	삼성상용차 주식회사
Former type	Subsidiary
Industry	Heavy equipment
Predecessor	Samsung Heavy Industries vehicle production division
Founded	August 1996
Defunct	December 2000
Headquarters	Daegu, South Korea
Number of employees	1,400 (1996)
Parent	Samsung

Samsung Commercial Vehicles (Korean: 삼성상용차,IPA: [sʰamsʰʌŋ sʰaŋjoŋtɕʰa]) was a South Korean trucks and construction equipment manufacturer established by the Samsung Group in 1996 and closed in 2000.

In 1992, Samsung started to seek approval to create a commercial vehicles' assembly plant through Samsung Heavy Industries, with Nissan Diesel's technological assistance. By 1994 the local government reluctantly granted all permissions, although Samsung Heavy Industries was assembling heavy trucks from May 1993, and also produced electric car prototypes between 1993 and 1994 (SEV-I, SEV-II and SEV-III). In 1996, Samsung Commercial Vehicles was spun off from Samsung Heavy Industries and on the same year was started the construction of a commercial vehicle plant in Daegu. Truck production was moved from Changwon to the new facility by late 1997. The company also opened a technical service centre at Pyeongtaek. The construction equipment business of Samsung Heavy Industries (mainly producing excavators) was sold to Volvo for US$512 million in July 1998, following the onset of the Asian financial crisis. The manufacturing operation was renamed as Volvo Construction Equipment Korea and Samsung maintained a minority 13% stake and received a payment from Volvo in exchange of keeping the "Samsung" trademark for a further three years. The forklift production business was sold to Clark Material Handling Company, which had licensed the designs of those kind of vehicles to Samsung since 1986, after an OEM alliance established in 1984.