Gräf & Stift

The Gräf brothers started a bicycle service workshop in Vienna in 1893, quickly branching out into bicycle manufacturing. Their bicycles sold well, requiring the company to relocate to be able to increase capacity. While the bicycle business in Europe was booming, the brothers also saw potential in the fledgling automobile, and commissioned Josef Kainz to design one. The result was an unusual voiturette with a one-cylinder De Dion-Bouton engine fitted in front of the vehicle, driving the front axle, built sometime between 1895 and 1898, according to various sources. It was thus arguably the world's first front-wheel drive automobile, but it never saw mass production, with only one unit made, even though the technology was eventually patented in 1900. However, the voiturette remained in regular use until 1914 and was in working condition in the early 1970s.

In 1971 the company merged with Österreichische Automobil Fabriks-AG (ÖAF) to form ÖAF-Gräf & Stift AG, which in turn was taken over by MAN AG the same year. ÖAF-Gräf & Stift AG continued manufacturing under that name, as a subsidiary of MAN. Still based in Vienna, it was focused on supplying trucks and buses for the Austrian market, mostly based on MAN designs, and additionally specialised in trolleybuses. It was MAN's main trolleybus producer in the 1980s and 1990s, and these were sold under the Gräf & Stift name, with trolleybuses being supplied to several European cities, including Salzburg, Solingen and Bergen (Norway), among others. The company built its first low-floor trolleybuses in 1992, ten vehicles for Innsbruck.

As of 31 December 2000, ÖAF-Gräf & Stift AG had 897 employees, and its sales for the six-month period from 1 July 2000 to 31 December 2000 (the company's "Short Fiscal Year 2000") totalled €111 million.

Use of the longstanding Gräf & Stift name ended in 2001, when MAN renamed the company MAN Sonderfahrzeuge AG, as part of reorganizations following its June 2001 acquisition of Neoplan. This in turn became MAN Nutzfahrzeuge Österreich AG in 2004. In that year, MAN built a new plant on Gräf & Stift's original site in the Liesing district of Vienna and continues to be the biggest employer in the area.