Colectivo

and, later, out of truck chassis (1950–1990, by Mercedes-Benz Argentina),[1] not specifically designed for the transportation of people, and were decorated with unique hand-painted drawings (fileteado) that gave each unit a distinct flavor.

They steadily evolved and grew larger, but kept their picturesque style until the 1990s, when the urban fleet was modernized with standard rear-engined bus units.

Commercial relations with the United Kingdom (mainly trade in meat and grain), also brought a myriad of investors and enterprises in the early years of the century, including Latin America's first metro system, cars, trains, tramways, taxis and public buses.

During its heyday, drivers deliberately challenged the "real" public buses and electric tramways, parking near them at the busiest stations and driving close to them during the day to pick up their passengers.

Mercedes-Benz moved into the colectivo market: in 1951 the then Daimler-Benz AG set up in Argentina its first factories outside Germany:[3] one in the town of San Martín, near Buenos Aires, and another in González Catán.

The Mercedes-Benz colectivos had truck powerplants, a diesel engine with power transmitted to the rear axle by a five-speed constant-mesh gearbox.

Blurring of the tradition of the colectivo In 1987 El Detalle, one of the bus body suppliers of Mercedes-Benz, started competing with its former chassis provider, investing in low price and modern urban buses, with cheaper Deutz engines.

Nowadays, only the three-digit numbering and some of the routes survive from the traditional "líneas", fileteado is rarely seen, the filigranas were lost, and some of the classic big details, such as the panoramic mirrors close to the driver's head, disappeared.

Fileteado has been defined as: "art on wheels": full of colored ornaments and symmetries completed with poetic phrases, sayings and aphorisms, both humorous or roguish, emotional or philosophical".

A simple example of a very common phrase is: Lo mejor que hizo la vieja es el pibe que maneja (loosely "The best thing my mum did was this bus-driving kid").

"Porteños" (Autonomous City of Buenos Aires' residents) have a love-hate relationship with the colectivo: on the one hand, they are usually very crowded in rush hour and plagued with pickpockets, petty thieves, beggars and hawkers (itinerant salesmen), though more controlled nowadays.

Most colectivos in the big cities of Argentina do not have a fixed timetable, but run at least four, and often many more, services per hour, depending on the bus line and time of day.