Pegaso

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Pegaso

logo
legal form Sociedad anónima ( joint stock company )
founding 1946
resolution 1994
Reason for dissolution Takeover by Iveco
Seat Barcelona , Spain
management Wifredo Ricart
Branch Automobile and commercial vehicle manufacturers , automobile industry

Pegaso was the successor to the Spanish motor vehicle manufacturer Hispano-Suiza after the nationalization of the factory in Barcelona by the Franco regime in 1945. Pegaso was the brand name of the national company ENASA ( Empresa Nacional de Autocamiones SA ) founded in Madrid that year . In 1990 the company was taken over by Iveco , which let the brand name expire in 1994.

history

Pegaso Z-102 Coupé 1955
Pegaso Z-102 Cabriolet 1955
Pegaso Z-103 Touring Coupé
Pegaso truck with tank body
Pegaso Troner
Pegaso 6420 standard bus

Hispano-Suiza motor vehicle production was discontinued in Paris in 1938 due to the looming war (which actually began a year later) , but continued for some time in neutral Barcelona . After the Second World War , the company was continued by the Spanish head of state, General Francisco Franco, as the state property ENASA (Empresa nacional autocamiones sociedad anonima) and mainly built commercial vehicles under the brand name PEGASO .

In order to provide the brand with international recognition and an incentive for the company's own employees to achieve the highest level of precision, the former engine designer at Alfa Romeo , the engineer Wifredo Ricart , designed the brand's best-known car, the prestigious Pegaso Z-102 , which was presented at the 1951 Paris Motor Show has been. This sports car was progressively designed for the 1950s, but barely a hundred were built. Initially it had a 2.5-liter V8 engine with two overhead camshafts ( DOHC ), which are driven by gear wheels, and desmodromic valve control without valve springs. A 2.8-liter V8 engine with four Weber twin downdraft carburetors was also offered. On request, the larger engine could also be equipped with a supercharger , which further increased the performance. The coupe had a De Dion - rear axle ; the synchronized five-speed transmission was with the self-locking differential locked ( transaxle ) and mounted behind the rear axle. The front wheels were suspended individually . Hardly any car resembled another, as the factory bodies were considered unsuccessful and all the well-known bodybuilders were literally keen to design the sports cars of this manufacturer.

According to the judgment of contemporary experts and testers, the Pegaso sports car in its first version, the Z-102, was considered to be a progressive car, albeit with certain development deficiencies (e.g. in the steering and gearshift), but which was nevertheless very powerful in any case and even in its simplest Execution ran over 200 km / h. The Z-102 was also used on a smaller scale in motorsport and won several races. The supercharged versions were among the fastest sports cars of their time with up to 265 kW (360 hp) and a top speed of over 250 km / h.

Starting from 1955 the successor type has been Z-103 presented also with a V8 engine, however, partly enlarged and in a simplified version with pendant - valves and a central camshaft in the engine block . Depending on the variant, the displacement ranged from 2,816 to 4,780 cm³; A compressor was available on request. From 1957, exclusive convertibles with 3.2 and 4.5 liter engines were built by the local coachbuilder Serra. Some experts criticized that Ricart should have designed V12 engines for sports cars instead of V8s in order to be able to compete more successfully with Ferrari . The company that belonged to his adversary Enzo Ferrari , who had left Alfa Romeo in 1939 after having had a difference with Ricart. Ricart parried this argument by pointing out that a V12 engine would have made the rather small sports car too top-heavy and that he was striving for the best possible compromise between performance and driving characteristics. Nevertheless, despite the plausible construction principle, it must be stated that the Pegaso was somewhat at a disadvantage compared to Ferrari on the international stage because of the V8 engine, because the Italians had been building racing cars with V12 engines that had already achieved world fame since 1945.

Because of the modest sales figures, not least because of the very high price, car production was given up in 1958. Shortly afterwards, at Franco's personal order, the production facilities were dismantled and scrapped. All in all, only about 86 copies of all versions of the Pegaso sports car were built (according to other sources about a hundred).

Since then, Pegaso has concentrated only on the main task of ENASA, the production of commercial vehicles , which, thanks to the long isolated Spanish market and the local approval regulations, was initially limited to the production of flatbed trucks and dump trucks. As early as 1963, the 1000 series of cab-over- engine trucks with split windshield had 160 hp (118 kW) from an in-line six-cylinder engine. This resulted in rather unusual truck models (at least compared to other countries) of particular length with two steered front axles and one or two driven rear axles, as articulated and articulated trucks were largely unknown on Spain's roads until the 1980s. Also included buses for program delivery. SAVA delivery vans / vans were added later.

Pegaso has also manufactured various military vehicles for the Spanish Army since the 1950s , including trucks and armored vehicles with all-wheel drive . In the 1960s, the British Leyland Motors took part in Pegaso, but it was not successful. A decade later, in the 1970s, their Dutch partner, the commercial vehicle manufacturer DAF , took a stake in Pegaso, but that too was not very successful. In the early 1980s International Harvester (IHC) had a 35% stake. In 1984 ENASA took over the British commercial vehicle manufacturer Seddon Atkinson , previously also an IHC subsidiary.

At the end of the 1980s, Pegaso was planned for privatization, modeled on SEAT . Due to a cooperation between MAN and Pegaso in the production of a light truck and a scheduled bus , MAN applied for the takeover. In 1990, however, IVECO , the truck and bus subsidiary of FIAT , acquired ENASA and continued Pegaso as IVECO's own brand in Spain. For the Spanish army, fire brigade, etc., the 265 kW (360 PS) Euro-Tech series was powered by an in-line six-cylinder with a turbocharger , which was also produced in a branch factory in Venezuela , almost identically constructed .

On July 12, 1994 with the end of production of the Pegaso Troner, the last independent Pegaso construction and at the same time the brand name Pegaso was discontinued; since then, all models in Spain have been trading as Iveco.

Known vehicles

Car

Omnibuses

truck

Military vehicles

See also

Web links

Commons : Pegaso  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Pegaso . In: Jane's Urban Transport Systems , 1985 edition, pp. 393/394; 1988 edition, pp. 488/489, Jane's Publishing Company, London / New York 1985 and Jane's Transport Press, Coulsdon 1988, ISBN 0-7106-0854-3