MAZ-103

The MAZ-103 is a Belarusian semi-low-floor city bus of large capacity, built by the Minsk Automobile Plant from 1996 to 2022. It is the basis of a family of several models of different layouts and purposes. The plant signed a licence agreement with Neoplan in 1992, which produced the MAZ-101, but its price and poor reliability on bad roads made it uncompetitive in the CIS market, and only five licence buses were built in pure form. The plant therefore adapted the design to local parts and developed the MAZ-103 with its own rear axle instead of the portal axle of the MAZ-101, which gave it a step at the rear door but made it cheaper, more reliable and easier to repair. A suburban version, the MAZ-103S, appeared in 1996, and a restyled bus was built from 2008. From 2017 it was also built with a compressed natural gas engine as the MAZ-103.965. An order to end production was signed in January 2021 when the third-generation MAZ-303 entered series production, but the bus was still built until 2022. About fifty modifications were created over its history, and the bus ran in dozens of cities in Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Romania, Serbia, Hungary and Poland.