FUSO’S Y PL ACE HAPP
For most of us, a commercial vehicle assembly plant in Europe conjures up images of huge buildings in big cities and robots – lots of robots. That might be the case in some instances, but it’s as far from reality as you can imagine when you’re talking about the Fuso plant in Tramagal, Portugal.
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n the event you’re smiling a little more than normal when you take delivery of your Fuso eCanter, finding it a ‘happy’ place in which to work over the months and years that follow, thank the truck. Karma, feng shui, the influence of ethereal things; if that’s your buzz then, rest assured, every eCanter comes with three payloads worth of the good stuff. You might well assume your little truck was spat out of a windowless behemoth
in a grey industrial hinterland somewhere in the world. Not so. When the itinerary on our recent visit to Europe said ‘visit to Fuso Europe plant, Tramagal’, I certainly assumed many wrong things. A beautiful countryside location, windy country roads, streams, picture-postcard villages, incredibly friendly people… and vineyards. They are the stuff of your little eCanter’s European birthplace, in gloriously sunny Tramagal, 140km north of Portugal’s
capital city, Lisbon. In fact, the location is so unique, you could have been excused for thinking our good bus driver was lost, and for a short time after leaving the motorway, he was. Thankfully some friendly locals outside a village fire station soon had him meandering with purpose again. The positive indications as we got close began to increase with vehicle transporters coming towards us loaded with gleaming new
Canters, plus the occasional ‘FUSO’ pointer buried among the sign trees in villages. Then, we turned up a lane, rounded a tree-lined curve, and there, high on a sign, were three big diamonds with FUSO written beneath. Driving into the parking area, and stepping out, there’s a picture of every staff member on the side of the main assembly building, such is the sense of community in this place. Finding multigenerational family members in the workforce is not hard by all accounts. Of course, the question is, how did a Fuso plant end up here? “People often say it’s in the middle of nowhere,” says plant CEO Arne Barden. “It’s not really.” The plant was established in 1964 by the Duarte Ferreira family from Tramagal for the production of Berliet military vehicles. That continued for 10 years, after which it assembled for other marques until 1980, when production for Mitsubishi Fuso commenced. Ownership transitioned to Mitsubishi Motors Portugal
Story and Photos by Dave McCoid
The road to Fuso Tramagal is not as you’d expect.
