Holland Car: http://www.holland-car.com/
Holland Car was established in 2005 as a joint venture between Trento Engineering in Sittard, Netherlands, and Ethio-Holland PLC in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The company is (was) based in Addia Ababa with production taking place in Modjo. The objective of the company was to assemble cars for the Ethiopian market, and later for export. A second plant was opened in 2008 in Tatek (Cassiopeia Assembly Factory). The company started assembling the Turkish
Tofaş Şahin, which was the old FIAT 131, until 2010 as the Holland DOCC (Dutch Overseas Car Company). From 2007 to 2009 the Chinese Lifan 520 was assembled as the Holland Abay. When collaboration with Lifan failed a new deal was made with JAC Motors from China and new models were assembled.
The
company ventured into the bus market in 2011 with the development of the Ahuda trailer bus, for which an assembly line was built but none were ordered and apart from the prototype none appears to have been built. Ethiopian blogs state that "trailers are for transport of animals" showing that the concept did not catch on. Interestingly Trento, the Ducth partner in the joint venture, had taken over the assets of the bankrupt Dutch company DUVEDEC (Duthc Vehicle Design), who developed various buses in the Netherlands. The trailer bsu clearly has a "DUVEDEC signature".
While in 2009 the company won Africa's Small, Medium and Micro Enterprise Award, things didn't develop as foreseen and teh founder, Tadesse Tessema, left the country beginning of 2013 and a court case against the company was started in April 2013. In 2014 the company filed for bankrupcy and the owner is on Interpol's seacrh list...
While the low-floor trailer buses may not have found direct acclaim in Addis Ababa, the concept is interesting and regrettably none were ever put in service to test it.
In spite of having folded, the company website is still active (2015-03).