The Man Nutzfahrzeuge Group is one of the most successful in the international arena of industrial vehicles. Major company of the Man Group, the German giant produces trucks and buses, over the coach with the Neoplan logo. Man Nutzfahrzeuge is based in Monaco of Bavaria while production plants are a dozen in Europe between Germany (Monaco, Nuremberg, Salzgitter and Plauen), Austria (Steyr), Poland (Posen, Sarachowice, Krakow) and Turkey (Ankara). To these are five others beyond the EU (Olifantsfontein and Pinetown in South Africa, Pune in India, Queretaro in Mexico and, last added in 2009, the plant at Jeddah in Saudi Arabia).

As a brand, Man has a secular past. The origins date back to late Nineteenth century. It was 1897 when two German factories agreed on merging their industrial production paving the way for the birth of the “Maschinenfabrik Augsburg Nürnberg” which will soon become known by the acronym of Man. The long road of the German company is lined with large success, first of all, for the diesel engine. It was the Maschinenfabrik Augsburg Nürnberg to believe first in the project of Rudolf Diesel, inventor of the combustion engine. It supported the thirty-four engineer providing him fundings, instruments and laboratory for the experiments. In 1897, four years after obtaining the patent, the diesel engine started to show the first encouraging evidence. The size and structure still remembered much of the steam engine but the thermal efficiency was undoubtedly higher: 26.2 percent with a power of 18 horses and oil as fuel. In a few decades the diesel engine was spreading worldwide in transport by sea, rail and on the road. To its completion contributed the Man technicians. Among the crucial steps, the direct injection of fuel into the combustion chamber, the system opened in 1923 and paving the way for smaller engines at high speed.

The development of diesel engines accompanied the development of Man vehicles for both freight and passengers division. As for the bus segment, the offer was extended from 2001 with the entry of the Neoplan brand in the Man world. That was a stratregic union that followed the acquisition of Gottlob Auwärter GmbH & Co KG by Man Nutzfahrzeuge Ag. Founded in 1935 by Gottlob Auwärter in Stuttgart, the German body builder owes its fame to the buses with standing structure (the series Neoplan launched in the Fifties and which gave its name to the company since 2001), to the introduction of air suspensions on coaches. But also to the first low floor articulated bus and airport and to the innovative double-deck coaches. The acquisition of the German body builder, lead to the establishment of Neoman Bus GmbH, a company that until 2008 represented Man and Neoplan brand for the bus and coach sector. Today the two brands refer directly to the Man Nutzfahrzeuge, a group that bills 15 billion euros and employs 51.000 people (2008 data).