Iveco S.p.A., an acronym for Industrial Vehicles Corporation, is an Italian multinational transport vehicle manufacturing company with headquarters in Turin, Italy. It designs and builds light, medium, and heavy commercial vehicles. The name IVECO first appeared in 1975 after a merger of Italian, French, and German brands. Its production plants are in Europe, China, Russia, Australia and Latin America and it has about 5,000 sales and service outlets in over 160 countries. The worldwide output of the company amounts to around 150,000 commercial vehicles with a turnover of about 10 billion.
The company was spun off from CNH Industrial on 1 January 2022. It is a subsidiary of Iveco Group N.V., a holding company incorporated in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and is listed on Borsa Italiana.
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 light vehicles 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 20-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 Veicoli Industriali, 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 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. 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 midrange Iveco Z/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. 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.