Fabryka Samochodów Ciężarowych
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FSC (in Polish Fabryka Samochodów Ciężarowych) is a large automotive factory established in Poland while it was part of the Soviet bloc. It was founded in 1950 and the first vehicle left its assembly line on November 7, 1951. The factory was built on a green field site in Lublin, to first produce light trucks and later vans, as well as vehicles for the military.
After the collapse of the Communist system in Poland in 1989 and the establishment of a free market economy, the state-owned FSC factory began to establish links with companies outside Poland. In 1995 the factory entered a joint venture with the South Korean conglomerate Daewoo. It soon become a part of the new company Daewoo Motor Polska. In December, 1995 the factory started assembling Daewoo Nexia passenger cars. Around 40,000 were produced before production ended in 1998. Daewoo also began a joint project with British manufacturer LDV to develop a new van.
Daewoo experienced serious financial problems following the financial crisis in Asia, which brought serious difficulties to the Lublin factory. Daewoo Motor Polska entered bankruptcy in October, 2001 and all production in the Lublin factory came to a halt. LDV bought Daewoo's share in the van project and moved the tooling to its factory in Birmingham, putting it into production in 2005 as the Maxus.
In 2003 the FSC factory was bought by Intrall, a British investment group, and production of the Lublin van resumed.
[edit] Products
Some of the vehicles produced at the factory:
- Lublin truck 1951-1959
- Żuk van 1958-1998
- Lublin van since 1993
- Daewoo Nexia 1995-1998
From 1963 to 1970 the company manufactured (together with a factory in Czechoslovakia) the armoured personnel carrier OT-64 SKOT. Around 4,500 were produced for the Polish and Czechoslovak armies.
