History
During the Soviet period, RAF and UAZ were the only producers of vans and minibuses in Soviet Union. RAF vans and minibuses were used only by state enterprises, most often as ambulances and for public transit. Private persons were not allowed to own them, the only exception being for families with at least five children.
In 1949 the factory began producing van bodies on the site of the Riga auto repair factory №2. In 1955, it was renamed the Riga Experimental Bus Factory (Latvian: Rīgas eksperimentālā autobusu fabrika, Russian: Рижский Опытный Автобусный Завод), and the products started to be abbreviated to RAF.
RAF’s first product was the RAF-251, a 22-seat local bus, based on the GAZ-51 chassis. From 1958 the factory started to produce RAF-977 minibuses, based on GAZ-21 Volga assemblies. It was planned to produce passenger, freight and specialized versions of the vehicle. The first batch of 1-ton vans was produced in 1962 and was based on modernized 977D chassis. However, the factory size was not large enough to put this model into mass production, and therefore it was moved to ErAZ (Yerevan, Armenia).
In 1976, the construction of a new factory in Jelgava was finished designed to produce 17,000 vehicles per year. The factory produced several versions of the RAF-2203 minibuses based on GAZ-24.
By the beginning of the 1990s, the RAF-2203 was completely outdated and the factory set about designing a new model. The original plan was to build a new RAF vehicle to be called the “Roksana”, designed with help from the British consultancy International Automotive Developments. The model was successfully displayed at several auto salons, but never got further than a prototype. The same thing happened to the front-wheel drive “Style” microbus.
After the collapse of the USSR, the new borders broke the supply chains and production fell drastically. An investment proposal came from the Russian GAZ company but it was rejected by the Latvian government which considered Russian capital a threat to Latvian independence. Although some Western and East Asian investors also showed their interest in RAF, all of them considered this investment too risky as the local market was too small to support large production and the Russian market was virtually closed due to the complicated political relationship of Russia and Latvia.
In 1997, the last group of 13-seat RAF-22039's was released. Ironically, the last automobile produced by the dying giant was a RAF-3311, designed to transport corpses.
In 1998, RAF went bankrupt. The only part of the company that survived was RAF-Avia, a charter airline set up using the four airplanes owned by the plant. The 120,000 m² manufacturing site, complete with machinery, is owned by JSC Balitva. They considered selling it to a western auto maker, but this proved unrealistic. As of 2002, the assembly shop was still in order and all the design documents existed, so production could be started again if there should be a need. ErAZ expressed interest, but probably only for the designs.
Read more about this topic: Riga Autobus Factory
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