What Does DARTZ Stand For? The Story Behind the Name

Most carmakers take their names from a founder or a place. DARTZ took its name from a letterhead. The letterhead belonged to one of the most ambitious factories of the early twentieth century.

The name, decoded

Letter	Stands for	Origin
D.A.R.	Division Automobile Riga	The Russo-Baltic Wagon Factory’s automobile department, 1908
T	Tank	The factory’s armoured-vehicle heritage, from armoured cars in 1914 to the Vezdekhod tracked prototype of 1915
Z	Zavod	Russian for “factory”

1908: a car department with a French name

In 1869, the Russo-Baltic Wagon Factory (RBVZ) was founded in Riga to build railway carriages, including imperial train coaches for Europe’s royal households. By 1907 it had decided to build cars. The prototype drew on a Belgian Fondu, and the new department did its business in French. Until a permanent name was chosen, it signed its letters Division Automobile Riga: D.A.R.

The first Russo-Balt car, the C24, rolled out of the Riga works in 1909 with the Swiss engineer Julien Potterat, then 26, at the wheel. Within a few years RBVZ was a Royal Court Supplier. It went on to build armoured cars, aircraft designed by Igor Sikorsky and, in 1915, the Vezdekhod, a tracked armoured prototype that DARTZ counts as a contender for the world’s first tank.

1988: eighty years later, the same letters

War and revolution ended the Riga chapter. In 1915 the works were evacuated to Moscow, and the Riga factory fell silent. In 1988, exactly eight decades after D.A.R., Leonard F. Yankelovich revived the legacy. He is the great-grandson of Gershn Antikol, who had held 40 shares in RBVZ since 1894.

He built the new name from the old one. D.A.R. honours the department where it all began. T stands for the armour that became the company’s calling. Z is for the factory itself.

Prombron’: the name on every model

The model name is older than DARTZ. In 1922 the evacuated factory, renamed the First State Armoured Vehicle Factory, assembled an armoured car from Russo-Balt parts brought from Riga. It was called Prombron’, a Russian abbreviation for Industrial Armour. The first was completed on 8 October 1922.

A century later, every DARTZ carries the name: the Prombron’ Iron Diamond, Black Stallion, Black Alligator and The Dictator Aladeen Edition.

And why never “SUV”

DARTZ doesn’t build SUVs. It builds BONDs.

“We call them BONDs: Bespoke Opulent Noble Drives.” Leonard F. Yankelovich to HotCars, 2021

His reasoning is simple. DARTZ clients already own every sports car they have dreamed of, and utility vehicles are for their staff. What they commission from Riga is something else: an armoured or unarmoured drive built to order and finished in natural leather, precious woods and real metals.

A note on the Z

On 24 February 2022, condemning Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, DARTZ removed the Z from its emblem: the letter had become the mark painted on the occupying forces’ vehicles and displayed by the invasion’s sympathisers. The name keeps its letters and its history: in DARTZ, the Z has always meant Zavod, the factory in Riga where it all began in 1869.