Navistar to International Motors: the truck maker left standing after Harvester's breakup
When International Harvester sold its farm machinery business in 1985, what remained was a truck and engine maker renamed Navistar on February 20, 1986. Over the following decades it supplied Ford with diesels, bought a school bus builder, weathered an activist investor and deep layoffs, and ended up owned by Volkswagen's truck arm, Traton.
Harvester had dabbled in trucks since its 1908 Auto Wagon, an early ancestor of the pickup. By the early 1980s a weak farm economy and the 1979 to 1980 strike had left it struggling, so chairman Louis W. Menk and president Donald Lennox sold off units such as the Solar gas turbine business to Caterpillar and Cub Cadet to MTD Products. A 1983 deal to supply Ford with a 6.9-litre diesel V8 lasted until 2010. The new Navistar name joined navigation with a star for its many truck lines, under an orange-red diamond logo.
After 1986 the company built only diesel vehicles. Its Thousand-Series trucks gained sloped hoods and faired-in lamps to save fuel, and the 9400 of 1990 pushed the front axle back for a longer nose. In 1991 it sold its last light truck and Scout parts business and bought a third of bus maker AmTran, taking full control in April 1995. The T444E engine of 1994 brought direct injection, turbocharging and the PowerStroke badge on Fords.
The 2010s were rough. Headquarters moved from Chicago towards Warrenville and finally Lisle, where a $110 million campus drew $65 million in state incentives. In June 2012 MHR Fund Management took a 13.6% stake, provoking a poison pill; that August Navistar switched to Cummins engines and selective catalytic reduction, and Carl Icahn attacked its management. The Garland, Texas plant shut in 2013 with 900 jobs lost, while overhead spending fell 16%.
Traton bought 16.6% for $256 million in 2016, proposed a full takeover on January 30, 2020, and completed it on July 1, 2021. A medium-duty truck partnership with General Motors began production in Springfield, Ohio in 2018. Now called International Motors, it employed about 14,500 people in 2024 and sells Class 4 to Class 8 trucks plus IC Bus school buses through nearly 1,000 outlets in North America and Brazil.
Source: International Motors
