Bus combine "Chavdar"

The workshop founded by Racho Dzhambov (1894–1983) in 1924 in the town of Botevgrad (then Orhanie), 50 kilometres from Sofia, built its first bus body on a Fiat chassis as early as 1928; between 1928 and 1948 it built almost 200 bus bodies on various makes of chassis. In 1947 the plant was nationalised and renamed the Georgi Dimitrov car body plant. Dzhambov continued at the plant as technical director.

On 1 May 1948 the first bus based on the Škoda 706 chassis was presented to the public, and it soon went into series production; in the 1950s buses were also built on Praga, MAN and Austro-Fiat truck chassis. In 1956, "at the wish of the workforce", the plant was named "Chavdar" (after a mythical Bulgarian national hero). The plant's capacity at the time was about 100 buses a year. In 1962 the new Chavdar M65 and M66 buses, based on Škoda units, were presented to the public.

In 1966 the Botevgrad plant was merged into the state industrial group DSO Avtoprom, which comprised 15 Bulgarian automotive companies, the best known being the Balkan plant in Lovech, which assembled Moskvitches, and Madara in Shumen, which built Škoda-LIAZ trucks. In 1968 the latest word in Bulgarian vehicle building was presented: the M80 and M81 buses using Škoda-LIAZ units. The all-metal bodies of these models were already built under licence from the well-known West German bus maker Karl Kässbohrer AG (Setra brand). These models went into series production as the Chavdar 11 M3 (touring coach) and 11 G5 (city bus).

In the second half of the 1970s about 3000 buses a year were built; in 1977 the modernised Chavdar 11 M4 city bus went into production, resembling a Setra in appearance and powered by either LIAZ or Raba-MAN diesels. The 11 M4 won gold medals at both the Brno and Plovdiv fairs in 1978.

Besides large city buses and coaches, other models were also built, notably the four-wheel-drive Chavdar 5C bus on the GAZ-66 chassis and the 20-seat Chavdar LC-51 midibus based on the Avia. In 1984 a licence for a new generation of buses was bought from the Austrian company Steyr-Daimler-Puch, and from 1988 the Chavdar 130 (city bus), Chavdar 140 (articulated bus) and Chavdar 330 (long-distance coach), using LIAZ units, went into production. A small batch of new Chavdar 410, 420, 430 and 530 coaches was also built.

In 1993 a cooperation agreement was signed with MAN, which resulted in the modernised Chavdar 141 articulated bus. In 1999 the plant ran into financial difficulties and ended in bankruptcy, which was also the end of bus building in Botevgrad.

A few Chavdar buses reached Estonia by obscure routes in the last years of the USSR.

History of the plant (in Bulgarian)