The history of "Ikarus" began in 1885, when the son of a simple village blacksmith Imre Uri came to the capital to try his luck. In Budapest, it occurs to him to continue the work of his ancestor. Imre Uri, like many industrialists of that time, began the production of carriages. Budapest, located in the very heart of Europe, attracted noble buyers from all over the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In the Pest region, on Elemer Street, at number 21, the Imre Uri forge and carriage workshop appears. Gradually, Europe is filled with "horseless carriages", the bodies of which are not particularly different from horse-drawn ones, but Imre continues to make carriages and carts - the horses have not yet been handed over to the archive, but deep down Imre realizes that carriage making is on the verge of disaster. Therefore, he decides to make several bus bodies on the chassis of the American Ford-TT truck. The bodies turned out to be quite modern, and Uri received a large order in 1927 - the Hungarian international transport company Mavart offered him to build a series of sixty bodies on the chassis of the Hungarian Raba L truck. Bus bodies of that time have wooden frames, sheathed with plywood on the inside and steel sheets on the outside. The following year, the company receives another order for buses, only now on a Mercedes-Benz chassis. Prosperity does not last long, the global economic crisis is not bypassed by the company of Imre Uri.
In 1916, another predecessor of the modern "Ikarus" appeared, "Joint Stock Company IKARUS", which manufactured machines and mechanical products. Both founders of this company, Moritz Emei and Jene Vechei, were renowned experts in the field of vehicle manufacturing. They gave their enterprise the name "Joint Stock Company IKARUS for the production of cars and aircraft".
Exhausted by economic cataclysms, Uri withdraws from business, handing over his business to his sons Zsigmond and Imre. In September 1933, they created "T.O.O. Brothers Uri "for the production of car bodies, cars, transport equipment and motorcycles. The name Uri was already well known in Hungary, and orders are pouring in like a cornucopia. Forty-four chassis, 11 vans, 2 trailers, 7 cabins for trucks, and most importantly, three luxury buses were built by the brothers in a year. In the late thirties, the plant begins to produce buses with a metal frame and a Mercedes engine located in the front. The Mavag N 26 was the first in a series of 174 vehicles built from 1938 to 1944, all of which operated in Budapest.
The outbreak of World War II greatly contributed to the success of the Uri brothers. In the gift reviews of the history of Ikarus, which were sent to Avtoexport in Soviet times, not a word was said that the company repaired and produced equipment for the German Wehrmacht, and since 1942 the company of the Uri brothers began to build aircraft. The aircraft plant, located in Chepel, was based in the body shop. Since the aircraft production site quickly outgrew the scope of the enterprise, in November 1942 it was transformed into a branch called JSC Aviation Plant. Of the 3,000 shares of the joint stock company, 2,900 belonged to the Uri brothers. At the very end of the war, the plant reaches the pinnacle of its development, the owners of the company turn to the authorities for permission to move their production base to the Matjashfeld area. The implementation of this plan is being delayed, and at this time the front of hostilities reaches Budapest. An attempt to transfer the plant's equipment to the rear, to the province, ended in failure, because on the way it was completely destroyed in an air raid.
After the Soviet troops entered Budapest, already in Matyashfeld, the Uri brothers repair cars and make pontoons for crossing the Danube. In 1946-1947, military orders were reduced, the inflation and political confusion that began became a serious threat to the plant, so it was nationalized and transferred to the Heavy Industry Center. Fifty buses, built for Budapest on the Mavag TR 5 and TR 3.5 chassis, were the first European monocoque vehicles with a front engine (rear mounted would be prohibitively expensive). In 1948, IKARUS Joint Stock Company for the production of automobiles and aircraft was also nationalized and merged with the same nationalized enterprise for the production of bodies and vehicles of the Uri brothers. In 1949, the IKARUS plant was created from these two enterprises.
At first, the combined Ikarus made radiators and bodies for various truck chassis, but by 1951 it produced the first Ikarus-30 bus, which became the successor of the TR 3.5 bus. Within five years, they managed to build 3172 of these buses. Then there was Ikarus-60, which became the most popular in Hungary, on its basis many Hungarian bodywork firms Mavag, Mawaut, Chepel and Püli built articulated vehicles, and in addition, the production of trolleybuses was launched at the Püli factory.
Ikarus-66, released in 1952, was unlike any of its predecessors. Streamlined rounded shape, one-piece windshield, body shell using light alloys. In the back of the bus, behind the hood flaps that opened like a garage door, there was a six-cylinder Chepel D-614 engine with a capacity of 145 hp. at 2800 rpm, which allowed the streamlined car to freely develop 100 km / h. Three years later, on the basis of Ikarus-66, the tourist Ikarus-55 was created, the car became even more rounded and swift. On the basis of the Ikarus-55, the production of Ikarus-Lux with a 170-horsepower Chepel engine and a 32-seat saloon began. It was these machines that became the basis of Hungarian exports and lasted more than 20 years in production. Ikarus-Lux was the main international bus operated in the USSR. They passed more than a million kilometers without major overhaul, and they could be found at the bus stations in Moscow, Leningrad, Riga, Tallinn and other cities.
In the late fifties, the Ikarus-630 family appeared - unlike the brilliant 66 and 55 models, these machines seemed like some kind of simpletons. They were divided between three enterprises: Ikarus made single machines, Mawout articulated, and Bullets made special and excursion machines. A large number of Ikarus-630s in the suburban version were operated in the Soviet Union. Dental offices, mobile hospitals and mobile mailboxes on the Ikarus-630 chassis worked in many of our cities. Six-cylinder diesel engine with a capacity of 145 hp. the Chepel plant provided the car with good dynamic qualities. The buses could be supplied with the layout desired by the customer.
Cooperation with the Chepel automobile plant developed. Chassis frames and units, suitable for various purposes and manufactured by Chepel, have made it possible to create a wide range of special-purpose transport and utility vehicles. Along with the growing export of buses, the manufacture of mobile workshops for their maintenance began. In the early sixties "Ikarus" began to produce various semi-trailers, vans, adapted to transport various goods. Taking these requirements into account, a semitrailer with a refrigeration unit, aggregated with the Csepel truck tractor, is being created. The refrigerator was able to maintain the temperature of pre-chilled food - 20 degrees, even at an ambient temperature of +30. Such refrigerators transported chilled food between Soviet cities.
In 1962 "Ikarus" takes over the General Mechanical Engineering Plant in the city of Szekesfehervar. At the same time, after thorough experiments, the Ikarus plant brought to the market a hundred-seat bus model Ikarus-556, designed primarily for urban transportation. It is equipped with a six-cylinder 170-horsepower engine located under the passenger compartment floor, air suspension and a power steering. This bus opens the series, within which the articulated version of the Ikarus-180 and its double-decker version began to be manufactured. The exceptional identity of the body units provided these buses with special advantages for the operating and repairing companies, facilitating the repair and provision of spare parts. Since 1969, Ikarus-180 accordions have been regularly supplied to the USSR; in Moscow they worked on lines connecting new neighborhoods with the nearest metro stations. From that moment on, the USSR became the largest importer of Hungarian buses.
The most popular project in the history of "Ikarus" appears in 1967. This is a typical family of the 200 series with a modular design, thanks to which, by changing the number and arrangement of the frame-panel body elements, it was possible to assemble buses of any length, height and with different door arrangements. This family provided two options for installing the engine: in the rear for single buses and under the floor for articulated buses. The body shape was functional and therefore did not become obsolete for a long time. The first long-distance Ikarus-250 entered Moscow at the beginning of 1968 for state tests, which successfully passed, after which regular supplies of tourist Ikarus-250, urban single Ikarus-260 and articulated Ikarus-280 16.5 meters long and eighteen-meter Ikarus-283 began. ... This family has received awards in international competitions, including Nice International Bus Week. "Dvuhsotkas" were in demand not only in our country, but also in many other countries, including the United States of America, where 723 Ikarus with Caterpillar engines and Allison automatic transmissions operated in eight cities. On the American continent, Cuba was, of course, the largest consumer of Icarus, Hungarian cars became the main urban transport on the "Freedom Island", they also carried passengers in Venezuela, Peru and Canada.
In the middle of 1984, the 200,000th Ikarus was assembled, and a new family of the "four hundred" series was presented, which gave the customer the opportunity to choose any engine - "Rab", "Man", "Daph" or "Cummins", since a universal motor frame is admitted. The former socialist countries chose buses that are simpler and, accordingly, cheaper, with the Hungarian diesel engine RABA (these are the cars that Tushino-Auto assembles), and these cars were supplied to the West with Euro-2, ABS and PBS engines, glued-in glass, electronic route boards.
When the socialist system collapsed in the early nineties, the prosperity of Ikarus also collapsed. The production and sale of buses fell sharply. Ikarus began to "rush" in search of alternative models and new markets, a subsidiary of Ikarus - Ikarus Special Coach Company presented a new series of buses E. It was also supposed to build small buses based on the units of Zilovsky "Bychka". The high-deck E96 won a tender for the supply of 200 vehicles to England.
In 1995, on the occasion of the centenary of its foundation, the company entered the Guinness Book of Records.
In 1999, after the privatization, JSC IKARUSBAS was founded, which became a member of the International Concertum IRIBAS. But the days of the Ikarus were numbered. The last large bus left the assembly line in February 2004, after which IRIBAS decided to build only compact cars for special orders.
