The Lviv Automobile Factory, mostly known under its obsolete name Lvivskyi Avtobusnyi Zavod (, literally "Lviv Bus Factory") was a bus manufacturing company in Lviv, Ukraine. Their brand-name is LAZ (ЛАЗ), and the company and its products are often referred to with this acronym rather than the full name.
It was one of the major bus manufacturers in the Soviet Union and the largest-ever industrial company in the city of Lviv. The factory was held by a private holding company.
History
The Lviv Bus Plant LAZ was built in 1945 to produce ZIS buses for the USSR. The LAZ 695 bus was designed and approved by the Moscow Ministry of Transport. Production began in 1956 and continued until 2006.
During the 1970s many new models were developed such as the LAZ 699, and 697 both of which are coach buses. In 1967, LAZ was awarded the best bus producer in Europe at the Brussels Auto Show. LAZ is known to be the first company to create the low floor bus, which came in 1963, was called the LAZ 360, and was designed by Nami USSR.
After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, LAZ suffered economic issues due to the loss of funding. Production was halted due to low demand. After Ukraine's economy started to stabilize, LAZ began producing their newer model, the LAZ 52523.
In 2001, LAZ was sold to Russian business tycoon Igor Churkin