The short version
Craiova has built cars continuously since 1976, under four different owners and three different flags. The plant is the city's largest private employer, the reason Dolj county's exports look the way they do, and the one piece of Craiova's industry that survived the 1990s intact enough to still matter.
The sequence, because everybody gets it slightly wrong: Oltcit → Automobile Craiova → Daewoo → Ford → Ford Otosan.
Oltcit, 1976–1994
A joint venture with Citroën, founded in 1976. The name is exactly what it looks like: *Olt*enia plus *Cit*roën. The cars were small, air-cooled, and distinctly French under the badge — the Oltcit Club and Special descend from Citroën's Axel programme.
The arrangement did not age well. Citroën eventually withdrew, the company became S.C. Automobile Craiova S.A. in 1991, and production carried on under the Oltena name. There was even an experimental variant with a Dacia 1,300 cc engine, called the Olda, which tells you most of what you need to know about the supply situation at the time.
Daewoo, 1994–2008
In 1994 a joint venture was formed with Korea's Daewoo Heavy Industries — 49% / 51%, under the name Rodae, later Daewoo Automobile Romania. The plant built Daewoo models until 2008.
This is the era most people in the city remember personally, and it is also the era that ended badly: the Romanian state recovered the plant and put it up for sale.
Ford, 2008–2022
Ford bought it and committed to €675 million of investment and 300,000 cars a year. The actual investment went further — around €1.2 billion — but the output pledge was never met. Ford Romania was founded as the operating company in 2008.
| Era | Years | Owner |
|---|---|---|
| Oltcit | 1976–1994 | joint venture with Citroën |
| Automobile Craiova | from 1991 | Romanian state |
| Daewoo | 1994–2008 | Daewoo Heavy Industries (51%) |
| Ford | 2008–2022 | Ford Motor Company |
| Ford Otosan | 2022– | Ford / Koç joint venture (Turkey) |
Where to stay nearby
Live prices and availability on a map centred on this exact spot — hotels, apartments and hostels, so you can judge the walk from here rather than guess from an address.
Bookings made through this map earn us a commission. Your price is unaffected.
Ford Otosan, 2022 onwards
In 2022 Ford of Europe transferred the plant to Ford Otosan, its Turkish joint venture with the Koç group, with a further €490 million tied to Ford's European electrification plans.
What comes off the line now: the Puma crossover, and the Transit/Tourneo Courier, whose production moved to Romania in October 2023. Reported output for 2025 was around 248,000 vehicles, with roughly 6,500 employees.
That last pair of numbers is worth holding next to Electroputere: the old works employed twice as many people and no longer builds anything. The car plant employs half as many and builds a quarter of a million vehicles a year. Both facts describe the same city, thirty years apart.
Why this matters to a visitor
More than you would think.
- It is why Craiova has an international airport with real traffic and why getting here is less awkward than the map suggests.
- It is why the hotels are the way they are. A large share of the city's beds are built around business travel on a Tuesday, not tourism on a Saturday — which is exactly why midweek rates in Craiova's hotels behave oddly compared with other Romanian cities.
- It is why the restaurant scene punched above its weight before tourism arrived. See where to eat in Craiova.
The names people confuse
- Oltcit was the car. Oltenia is the region — see the Oltenia pages.
- Avioane Craiova builds aircraft at Ghercești and has nothing to do with this plant: the aircraft works.
- IAR is a different company near Brașov. The IAR-93 and IAR-99 carry its prefix but were built in Craiova, which is the single most common mix-up in the whole story.
Further reading on this site
The history of Craiova for the long frame, Craiova's maximum, 1983 for the industrial peak, and the communist city for the layer of the city that industry built. If you are here to look at things rather than read about them, start with what to see or the Belle Époque centre.
*Investment and output figures on this page come from Romanian business press and encyclopaedic sources; reviewed as a source set in October 2026. Where sources disagree — the exact start of the Citroën talks, the final Oltcit year — we give the range rather than a false precision.*
