Breda M221 - an Italian passenger bus that almost became Russian

What kind of buses were there in the 90s! This is the time - former Soviet factories were literally thrown into the stormy capitalist sea. Sales fell sharply, partners with whom they had worked for decades suddenly found themselves financially insolvent. By the mid-90s, the situation began to gradually improve. Administrations of large cities now have money to renew their vehicle fleets. But by that time manufacturers were no longer able to provide everyone with equipment. And their models were outdated back in the 80s. It’s not just that in the era of the late USSR the most valuable bus was the Ikarus.


I had to look for foreign partners. They quickly abandoned the purchase of batches of equipment, realizing the inconsistency of such a scheme. It was necessary to somehow save our producers, and not provide multimillion-dollar contracts to foreigners. And in 1998, an agreement was signed in Italy with the Italian Breda. According to him, the buses were to be assembled in St. Petersburg, and in such quantities as to supply not only Russia, but also other CIS countries. And even several Breda-M221 were brought to work to test them. But the ruble devalued, after which Italian buses began to cost two and a half times more than Russian ones. The project was canceled. But we still have at least one Breda-M221. They will talk about him on the channel “Ivan Zenkevich PRO cars”.