The Budd Company unveils its first SPV-2000 self-propelled railcar in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
The Budd SPV-2000 is a self-propelled diesel multiple unit railcar built by the Budd Company between 1978 and 1981 for use on North American commuter railroads. The design was a successor to Budd's popular Rail Diesel Car (RDC) but based on the body of the Amfleet passenger car. It did not prove a success: Budd built 31 cars and they proved mechanically unreliable.
The Budd Company was a 20th-century metal fabricator, a major supplier of body components to the automobile industry, and a manufacturer of stainless steel passenger rail cars, airframes, missile and space vehicles, and various defense products.Budd was founded in 1912 in Philadelphia by Edward G. Budd, whose fame came from his development of the first all-steel automobile bodies in 1913, and his company's invention of the "shotweld" technique for joining pieces of stainless steel without damaging its anti-corrosion properties in the 1930s.
Budd Company became part of Budd Thyssen in 1978, and in 1999 a part of ThyssenKrupp Budd. Body and chassis operations were sold to Martinrea International in 2006. No longer an operating company, Budd filed for bankruptcy in 2014. It currently exists to provide benefits to its retirees.