Bulgarrenault

The basic idea was to purchase complete knock down (CKD) kits of passenger cars from abroad with Bulet's available hard-currency reserves, and then to assemble them in the factories owned by Metalhim.

The project leaders of the establishment of the Renault assembly works in Bulgaria were the French engineer Pierre Auberger, and the managing directors of ETO Bulet Emil Razlogov and of SPC Metalhim gen. Yamakov.

Stefan Vaptsarov became the technical leader, while Atanas Taskov and Georgi Mladenov were named as heads of the export of passengers cars at ETO Bulet.

Initially, France provided all necessary parts and components of the cars, but the plan was to gradually switch to a progressive assembly, which would eventually lead to the great majority of them being manufactured in Bulgaria.

The new factory functioned until 1970 and, in addition to its fully automated moving assembly line, it included modern welding and painting machinery as well, the latter obtained at a cost of US$15 million.