In 1853 Franz Saurer (1806–1882) from Veringenstadt, Germany established an iron foundry for household goods near the Swiss town of Sankt Gallen.

Two of Franz Saurer's sons – Anton and Adolph – were aware of this invention, saw an opportunity, and began building hand embroidery machines in their father's foundry around 1869.

Competition motivated engineers at Saurer to develop their own Jacquard card reader, improve the stitch rate, and increase the machine's width (i.e. the total number of needles and throughput).

In Italy, the Officine Meccaniche (OM) manufacturer was for many years licensee of Saurer engines and other mechanical units, which they used in their own ranges of trucks and buses.

In Poland the state-owned Państwowe Zakłady Inżynieryjne produced license-built Saurer engines (powering, among others, the 7TP and 9TP tanks) and coach chassis used in the Zawrat bus.

Coleman, had the rights to manufacture and sell heavy trucks under the Saurer brand name at its plant in Plainfield, New Jersey (which commenced operations in November 1911).

Typically Saurer, or Berna, trolleybuses featured Brown, Boveri & Cie or Société Anonyme des Ateliers de Sécheron (SAAS) electric equipment and Carrosserie Hess bodies.

In World War 2, a restructured type BT 4500 and 5 BHw of Saurer trucks were used to gas people in the Nazi Chełmno extermination camp.

Extermination vans were adapted, when they went in for repair, to carry the optimum number of people who could be gassed in the time it took to drive them from Chelmno to the woods where they were disposed of in ovens.

However the cylinders were bent into a V shape[clarification needed], allowing them to be doubled up on each crank shaft to create a compact diamond arrangement.

The FLB project was dropped to make room for an urgent requirement to develop the Hispano-Suiza 12Y-51 V-12, a conventional four-stroke petrol engine, which was no longer available.

[5] Declining sales in the early 1980s saw the two leading Swiss truck makers, Saurer and FBW (Franz Brozincevic & Cie of Wetzikon, Switzerland), forming a joint organization called Nutzfahrzeuggesellschaft Arbon & Wetzikon, proceeding with motorbus and trolleybus production under the NAW brand, while the last Saurer-badged truck sold in the open market was delivered in 1983.

Four years later, in 1987, a model 10DM supplied to the Swiss Army meant the very last Saurer truck produced in history.

The previous major shareholder, Tito Tettamanti, specialized the company in textile machinery and "propulsion technology" and had acquired the main competitors Schlafhorst and Ghidela.

Since 2007, the conglomerate Saurer AG, which meanwhile had reached a worldwide leading status in textile machinery[citation needed], has been integrated into the Oerlikon Corporation.

Since 2007 the remaining part of Saurer AG automotive, Graziano Trasmissioni, a manufacturer of gears, gear groups and complete transmission systems for agricultural, earth moving and special vehicles, as well as for four wheel drive passenger cars, and luxury sport cars, has been integrated into the Oerlikon Corporation.

Luxury car manufacturer Monteverdi put a civilian version of the Saurer F006 military vehicle, which they called the 260Z, on display at the Geneva Motor Show 1979.

While Monteverdi did not use the Saurer chassis, they did produce two versions of a luxury SUV called the Safari/Sahara, based on the International Scout vehicle.

The passenger seats are closed with a fast removable plastic sheet at the rear, including a military holder for a gas canister; a fixed structure[clarification needed] is provided for use in case of fire.

Unlike the F006, the F007 has three windshield wiper blades instead of two, four headlights instead of two, and the front parking lights and turn signals are housed in the same headlamp shell.