Overview
OJSC AMO ZiL, known fully as the Public Joint-Stock Company – Likhachov Plant and more commonly called ZiL (, was a major Russian automobile, truck, military vehicle, and heavy equipment manufacturer that was based in Moscow.
The last ZiL vehicle was assembled in 2012. The company continues to exist only as real-estate development site, on which a new urban district will be built by the LSR Group construction company.
History
The factory was founded on 2 August 1916 as the Moscow Automotive Society or AMO. The factory was completed in 1917, just before the Revolution, and was built south of Moscow near Moscow River in Tjufeleva grove. It was a modern building with the latest in American equipment and was designed to employ 6,000 workers. The plans were to produce Fiat F-15 1.5-ton trucks under license. Because of the October Revolution and the subsequent Russian Civil War, it took until 1 November 1924 to produce the first vehicle which was shown at a parade on 7 November, the AMO-F-15. Nevertheless, the factory still managed to assemble trucks bought from Italy in 1917–1919. On April 30, 1923 the factory was named after an Italian communist Pietro Ferrero, but in 1925 was renamed to First National Automobile Factory (Russian: 1-й Государственный автомобильный завод). 2 years later in 1927 Ivan Likhachev was appointed as a head of the factory, a person whose name the factory bears from 1956. In April 1929, it was agreed on to expand the plant to build Autocar 2.5-ton truck models.
From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).