Ikarbus
Ikarbus is a bus company in Belgrade , Serbia .
The company was founded as Ikarus AG - First Serbian Aircraft, Automobile and Machine Factory Kovačević and Co. (Ikarus AD - prva srpska industrija aeroplana, automobila i strojeva Kovačević i drugovi) on October 13, 1923 by Dimitrije Konjović , a former kuk pilot , (who was awarded a medal for bravery, humanity and mercy by France after the war for the rescue of a French submarine crew in World War I (1915) - the submarine Q 70 Foucault had previously sunk Konjović), Josif Mikl , already an aircraft designer in the Austro-Hungarian Empire , Đoka Radulović and the brothers Dušan and Milivoje Kovačević .
Aircraft development
The company emerged from a public tender by the Yugoslav Ministry of the Army and Navy in 1923 for domestic companies that were to operate the production of aircraft with government funding . From this tender Ikarus and Rogožarski were selected, the latter should become a competitor for Ikarus. The Ikarus company bought the former Protić engine factory in Peterwardein and began manufacturing aircraft there.
As with Rogožarski, the first model was the Brandenburg with 100 hp Daimler-Benz engines. In addition to its own models, licensed builds followed such as the French Potez 25 , the British Hawker Fury or the Czechoslovak Avia BH-33 . The most famous own models were the Ikarus IK-2 , the bomber Ikarus Orkan and the project IK-5 , a twin-engine fighter, which with a planned 690 km / h should have become the fastest fighter of its time and also aroused the interest of Igor Sikorski , who specially visited the Ikarus works.
After the Second World War , the company was merged with Rogožarski to form the State Aircraft Factory (Državna Fabrika Aviona). Ikarus manufactured Yugoslavia's first post-war fighter, the Ikarus S-49 , a further development of the Rogožarski IK-3 , as well as, among other types of aircraft, the first Yugoslav jet aircraft, the Ikarus 451M , which was only a prototype. With the relocation of the state aircraft factory to Soko in Mostar in 1960, aircraft production at Ikarus finally ended.
Bus production
As early as 1954, omnibuses were also produced under license from the Austrian Saurerwerke parallel to aircraft production. In 1968 a contract for cooperation in the production of buses was signed with MAN . In 1972 a new production site was put into operation next to the Belgrade-Zagreb motorway .
In 1992 the company was converted into a public limited company. The name Ikarbus comes from 1993 in order to avoid confusion with the large Hungarian bus manufacturer Ikarus . Further cooperation agreements were concluded with Mercedes-Benz in 1997 and with DAF in 2002 .
