Croatia’s automotive industry is not highly developed: industrial enterprises mainly produce automotive components and transportation software. They supply components to world-famous companies from Germany, France, the USA, Italy, Japan, and Sweden. However, the Croatian market also has its own notable automobile brands. They aren’t very popular abroad but are sometimes exported in small quantities, such as Rimac Automobili’s electric sports car. Let’s consider the brightest representatives of the local car industry.
Crobus
AZ Crobus is a well-known bus manufacturer in Croatia, registered in 2006. Its history began with the intercity bus project. The prototype of the tourist liner, named after the goddess of the morning dawn, Zora, was created in 2011 and later entered mass production.
The logo representing the Croatian manufacturer’s products is a silver circle. Inside it is a smaller circle covered with thin horizontal lines. In the center is a red parallelogram, the emblem’s brightest element. The frame is a wide ring with a dark gray inscription, “CROBUS,” arched across the upper part. Designers applied a gradient and added light highlights to make the graphic composition appear volumetric. The company name is duplicated on the right, in large silver letters. The glyphs are sans serif, and all strokes are nearly the same thickness.
DOK-ING Loox
The private Croatian company DOK-ING has its own automotive division. It was founded in 2010, when the DOK-ING Loox prototype was presented. The company planned to start serial production of this electric car in 2012, but it never started because no investor would finance it. The car exists only on paper.
The electric car brand’s logo is a triangular ridge with a high wave on top. Its outer outline is bold and black. Then, a wide white stripe was drawn, separated from the rest of the shield by a thinner black line. In the center is a composition of four geometric figures that touch the corners. The composition consists of two small black squares and two dark red polygons on a white background. They alternate, so the left and right sides of the picture appear to be mirror images. The inscription “DOK-ING” uses a sans-serif font similar to Korataki Bold by Typodermic Fonts Inc.
TAZ Neretva
Tvornica Autobusa Zagreb founded the Croatian automobile industry. This plant was opened in 1930. It produced trucks, buses, and motorcycles, which were exported to other countries. One of its main passenger-transport brands was TAZ Neretva. Under that name, it produced minibusses popular in the Balkans. But in the late 1990s, the plant was closed, and with it, all the brands disappeared.
The TAZ “Neretva” logo looked brutal. In the center was a black heraldic shield with two rectangular projections on either side. Inside it was written the abbreviation “TAZ”: a large letter “A” proudly rose between the small, uneven “T” and “G.” The shield was placed in a white circle, framed on both sides with black lines. And on the outside was a ring with the inscription “TVORNICA AUTOBUSA ZAGREB.” The third word was located at the bottom and was separated by short dashes.
Rimac Automobiles
Since independence, Croatia has exported almost no cars abroad. But there are exceptions. The first of them was the Rimac Concept One electric sports car, presented in 2013. Rimac Automobili, a private company founded in 2009, produces it and specializes in sports cars.
The manufacturer’s emblem is very minimalistic. It is a triangular shield with the letter “R” inside and the inscription “RIMAC” on the right. The shield’s base is white, and the outline is black. Non-standard glyphs are black; all except “I” lack individual fragments.