The story
The factory was created in 1937 as a wood processing plant LOZOD (Likino Engineered Wood Test Factory). It produced pressed wood products, as well as wood particle boards. In 1944 the factory was renamed to LiMZ (Likino Machinery Factory) and it started producing small machinery like power saws and portable generators.
In 1959 the factory started to assemble ZIL-158 passenger buses. It was renamed LiAZ the same year. In 1967 the factory designed and began manufacturing the first bus model of its own named LiAZ-677. The factory produced 194,183 buses of this model in the next 29 years.
In 1986 began the production of the new model LiAZ-5256, which today is the most common large bus model in Russia (through December 2013 more than 24,650 buses had been manufactured).
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, LiAZ started to experience difficulties. In 1996 bus manufacturing ceased and the factory declared bankruptcy in 1997. The factory has since been restructured and is now known as Likinskij Avtobusnyj Zavod LLC. In 2000 it was acquired by the RusAvtoProm Corporation, and has been part of the GAZ Group since 2005.
LiAZ also manufactured trolleybuses between 2005 and 2012.
From Wikipedia’s article on LiAZ (Russia), shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4