The TAM 110 T7 was a medium-weight truck from the Maribor factory in Slovenia, then part of Yugoslavia. It stayed in production from 1976 to 1991, and its name alone told a buyer the engine output and the gross weight.
TAM 110 at a glance
| Maker | Tovarna avtomobilov Maribor, Slovenia |
|---|---|
| Factory designation | TAM 110 T7 B/BV |
| Production | 1976–1991 |
| Engine output | 110 hp, from the model number |
| Gross vehicle weight | 7 tonnes, from the model number |
| Class | Medium-weight commercial truck |
| Plant | Maribor, Slovenia, then Yugoslavia |
| Model range | TAM 75, 80, 90, 100, 110, 125, 130, 150, 162, 170, 190, 260 |
| Naming system | power in hp, T for tovornjak, gross weight in tonnes |
| Company in the 1970s–80s | the largest truck and bus maker in Yugoslavia |
| Company dissolved | 1996 |
TAM has no separate article on the 110. The model appears in the past product line of the articles on the company, and its engine output and weight follow TAM’s own naming convention.
History of the TAM 110
The numbering behind the name
TAM trucks of this period were named by a formula of three variables: number, letter, number. The 110 T7 therefore reads as a truck of 110 hp with a maximum permissible total weight of seven tonnes, and the letter T stands for tovornjak, the Slovenian word for truck. The same system ran through the whole range, from the 75 to the 260, and it told a buyer the two facts that mattered most on Yugoslav roads.
Built in Maribor
The 110 belonged to the range of the Maribor factory, which had grown out of a wartime aircraft-parts plant into Yugoslavia’s largest maker of trucks and buses. A licence agreement with the German firm Klöckner-Humboldt-Deutz in 1957 gave TAM the technology for 4.5-tonne trucks with about 30 percent of the parts made at home; by the time the 110 T7 appeared in 1976 the factory was also building military trucks for the JLA and exporting, mainly to non-aligned countries.
Fifteen years in the range
The 110 T7 B/BV stayed in the catalogue from 1976 to 1991. Those were the plant’s busiest years: 192,136 vehicles were built between 1971 and 1985, the 200,000th vehicle came in 1986, and the workforce then numbered 8,175. Production of the 110 ended in 1991, the year Yugoslavia began to break up; the company itself was dissolved in 1996.
Design and features
- Factory numbering: 110 hp and seven tonnes gross weight read straight from the badge.
- Medium-weight class: the seven-tonne rating sat between the lighter 75 and 80 and the heavy 150 and 190.
- Long production run: fifteen years in the catalogue, from 1976 to 1991.
- Part of a wide range: listed alongside the 75, 80, 90, 100, 125, 130, 150, 162, 170, 190 and 260.
TAM 110 versions
- 110 T7 B/BV (1976–1991): the designation given in TAM’s past product line.
- B and BV: the two suffixes in the factory designation; the sources do not explain what distinguished them.
- TAM 100 and TAM 125: the neighbouring models in the same numbered range.
- TAM 150 T11 B/BV (1979–1991): the heavier model with the same B/BV suffix.
The TAM 190 was the heavier member of the same numbered range, and the smaller TAM 75 sat at its bottom. More vehicles from the factory are in the TAM collection.
Video: TAM 110 Mali JAMI u sumi
Video by Marko Nedeljkovic on YouTube.
Sources
- TAM-Europe, English Wikipedia: model list, naming convention, company history
- Tovarna avtomobilov Maribor, Slovenian Wikipedia: licence, production figures, employees
