Ford Union
Former joint venture in Belarus
The Ford Union (Belarusian: Форд-Юніён) was a joint venture of the Ford Motor Company, the Russian Lada importer Lada-OMC and the Belarusian government. It was located in Apčak near the city of Minsk in Belarus. Ford invested a capital of US$10,000,000 for building the plant. The company existed from 1997 up to 2000 when it was closed due to low sales.
The Ford Union was not a manufacturer, it was only an assembler of SKD kits. The vehicles assembled by the Belarusian plant can be identified by the manufacturer code Y4F on the start on the VIN and an R on the eleventh position for the plant identification.
The plant gained attention on 23 July 1997 as Belarusian president Alexander Grigoryevich Lukashenko was invited to a press conference with five strategically selected foreign journalists to discuss a predicted failure which later proved true.
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Ford Union”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Ford logo flat.svg by Ford Motor Company, Public domain
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