ZiL

ZiL was founded on 2 August 1916 as the Moscow Automotive Society (AMO) (Russian: Автомобильное Московское Общество, romanized: Avtomobilnoe Moskovskoe Obshchestvo) and the factory was built in Tyufeleva Grove south of Moscow, inside a meander of the Moskva River, being completed in 1917 just before the Russian Revolution. 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 licence in 1917, but because of the October Revolution and the subsequent Russian Civil War, it took until 1 November 1924 to produce the first vehicle, the AMO-F-15, which was shown at a parade on 7 November.

Nevertheless, the factory still managed to assemble trucks bought from Italy from 1917 to 1919. On 30 April 1923, the factory was named after Italian anarchist Pietro Ferrero, but in 1925 was renamed to First National Automobile Factory (1-й Государственный автомобильный завод; 1-y Gosudarstvennyy avtomobil'nyy). In 1927, Ivan Likhachev was appointed as a head of the factory. In April 1929, it was agreed on to expand the plant to build Autocar 2.5-ton truck models.

From 1929 to 1931, the ZiL factory was re-equipped and expanded with the help of the American company A.J. Brandt Co., and changed its name to Automotive Factory No. 2 Zavod Imeni Stalina (ZIS or ZiS), in honour of then-Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. In the 1930s, facilities were modernised, which allowed the factory to manufacture vehicles with parts that were domestically designed in the Soviet Union, rather than purely licensed and imported models.

Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, the ZIS plant was soon evacuated to new facilities in cities further east, including Ulyanovsk, Chelyabinsk, Miass, and Shadrinsk. These factories continued to manufacturer automobiles as separate entities after the end of the war in 1945. The ZIS plant began manufacturing refrigerators in 1950. ZIS was a major provider of training, tooling, and technical support for the establishment of First Automotive Works in 1953, as part of Soviet assistance to the People's Republic of China. The Jiefang CA-10, based on the Soviet ZIS-150, was the first Chinese-produced truck and began production in 1956.

In 1956, during the De-Stalinization period, the factory's name was changed again to Zavod imeni Likhachyova ("Factory named after Likhachev") after its former director Ivan Likhachev. ZiL had a history of exporting trucks to Cuba, trade resumed in the early 21st century.

By the mid-1970s, ZiL was struggling to compete as a truck manufacturer with the newly-built KAMAZ plant located in Naberezhnye Chelny. The ZIL-130 was severely outdated and its main development project, the ZIL-170, was transferred to KAMAZ. Production of the ZIL-133, a modernised version of the ZIL-130 with a 3 axle configuration, began in 1975 to hold over until a new model could be produced. ZiL began concentrating on development of the ZIL-169 which featured a brand new engine that was designed in-house at the factory. However, testing found serious flaws with the new transmission, which had to be redesigned. Delays meant that the earliest examples of the ZIL-169 were only produced in 1985, and preparations for full-scale production were only completed just before the collapse of the Soviet Union.