Tomos - more than Puch replicas

Just a few years after the company was founded, production moved to the more conveniently located Slovenian harbour town of Koper. The company initially refrained from developing its own models when realising this project, instead relying on the licensed production of proven models from the West. The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia owes its special role within the so-called Eastern Bloc to the fact that this was possible at all and that no two-wheeler models or cars had to be manufactured in the socialist brother states, but that is another story. The Slovenian engineers found a licence partner in the automotive sector in the French vehicle manufacturer Citroën, while in the two-wheeler sector the Slovenian Tomos cooperated with none other than the legendary Austrian moped manufacturer Puch. In practice, in the early years this meant that the first two-wheelers assembled in the workshops in Sežana or Koper consisted entirely of parts supplied by the Austrian manufacturer. These were mainly licence replicas of the moped that had been built worldwide for the longest period of time. We are talking about the MS50 model, better known as the ‘Stangl-Puch’.

Soon, however, the Slovenian designers no longer limited themselves to simply screwing together supplied parts and producing licence replicas, but began to develop their own engines and vehicles. The Slovenians made their first mark with the numerous moped models of the Colibri series. Even at first glance, the similarity to the Austrian model, the ‘Stangl-Puch’, is noticeable in all the Colibris, but over time more and more Puch components were replaced by the company's own components on the popular models.

Encouraged by these successes, the engineers and designers at Tomos consistently pursued their chosen path. The declared aim was to become more self-sufficient through further in-house development and innovation and to further reduce dependence on licence partners. But it was a long road and it would be years before Tomos was able to present a moped that had been developed entirely in-house. Initially, the dependence on Puch remained in the light motorbike sector, but a turning point came in the 1970s. While the Colibri models T-03, T-12 and T-13, which were launched on the market at this time, were still equipped with Puch engines, the Colibri moped 14V was the first to use a 2-stroke single-piston engine with backwash and fan cooling developed by Tomos. This unit proved so successful that from 1973 onwards, almost all two-wheelers were equipped with the engines developed in-house.

When the moped boom began to fade out in the mid-1980s and moped sales figures plummeted across Europe, many large moped makers turned the spanner and ceased production or sold off their entire moped division. This sad period of decline signalled the end for many traditional manufacturers. But Tomos survived the crisis years. On the one hand, the moped manufacturer owes this to its special status as a state-owned company. However, the sites in Sežana, Epe and Koper had not only been busy building mopeds in recent years, but had also constantly modernised their production facilities and machinery. This enabled the Slovenian manufacturer to cope with the loss of its most important partner company, Puch, and continue producing mopeds. Until 2009, the two-wheelers were still produced at the main plant in the Netherlands, including new developments such as the Sprint moped, the Targa-Perle (ST) and the Targa-LX moped. In order to save production and labour costs, moped production was moved back to the main plant in Koper at the turn of the year 2009/10. Rumours were already causing a stir at the time that Tomos no longer felt up to the competition from Indian and Chinese moped manufacturers and was planning to sell the moped division. However, the company denied a written company statement to this effect that had been circulated. The Slovenian moped manufacturer bravely held on for another decade until the company finally and unfortunately had to file for insolvency in 2019.