The story and background to the manufacture of commercial vehicles using CKD kits is linked to the birth and development of the FIAT VEICOLI INDUSTRIALI company from 1899 to 1975.
From 1975 to the present day, the manufacture of vehicles assembled from CKD kits runs parallel to the creation of the IVECO SpA company, which is currently a company brand of
CNH INDUSTRIAL Co..
The idea of assembling commercial vehicles (trucks) by sending kits of assemblies and loose parts first emerged straight after the war following a policy of development of the emerging countries that had decided to create industrial structures linked to the technologically advanced world.
This could be put into practice by creating local industrial companies that used products designed and built in companies in more industrialised countries.
The best way to supply the components for assemblies of vehicles already manufactured consisted in breaking down all the parts and creating kits which could be shipped to the farthest corners of the world.
Customs charges were defined ad hoc by the Governments of emerging countries to allow budding national industry to prosper; in this way the customers avoided paying the high import tax on finished vehicles, while helping to combat unemployment.
This plan was initially successful in countries with large populations or higher living standards, and a sound economic base, like South America (Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela and then Mexico), the Far East (Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam) and the Middle East (Iran, Turkey).
In the 1960s this practice also spread to the continent of Africa, starting from the more advanced countries in North Africa (Libya, Tunisia, Morocco and Egypt) and South Africa, and later to other sub-Saharan countries like Nigeria, Ethiopia, Sudan,Senegal, Tanzania, Kenya and Congo.
South America
East Asia
Africa
