Scania began as a bicycle maker, and its griffin logo sat on a chainset
Scania's griffin comes from the coat of arms of the Swedish province of Skåne, and it once sat at the centre of a three-spoke bicycle chainset, a nod to the Malmö firm's beginnings as a bicycle maker in 1900. Daimler-Benz later argued the design resembled its three-pointed star, and won.
Scania-Vabis was formed in 1911 when that Malmö company merged with Vabis, a Södertälje railway car builder founded in 1891 that was close to shutting down. Facing cheap imported cars, the new firm built luxury models, including a 1920 limousine with a top hat holder in the roof. War work for the Swedish Army brought profits, but a 1919 decision to build only trucks ran into a flood of surplus military vehicles, and the company went bankrupt in 1921 before Wallenberg family money rescued it.
By the end of the 1950s Scania-Vabis held 40 to 50 percent of Swedish truck sales and 70 percent of the heaviest class, while acting as an agent for the very profitable Volkswagen Beetle. Exports rose from 10 percent of output before 1950 to half a decade later, following a model pioneered by the Dutch importer Beers, which offered customers free overhauls twice a year. A full factory opened near São Paulo in 1962 and another at Zwolle in the Netherlands in 1964.
The logo dispute ended in 1968 with the design stripped back to a griffin's head, and the company rebranded simply as Scania that year. It merged with Saab in 1969, becoming Saab-Scania, until the split in 1995. Volvo's 1999 bid for a majority failed when the European Union objected that the combined firm would dominate Nordic markets, and MAN later dropped a hostile offer launched in 2006.
Now part of Volkswagen's Traton group and based in Södertälje, Scania delivered 94,073 vehicles in 2025 on net sales of SEK 198.5 billion, employing nearly 53,000 people in more than 100 countries. It opened a manufacturing hub at Rugao in China in October 2025.
Source: Scania AB
