The factory was founded in 1916 as Avtomobilnoe Moskovskoe Obshchestvo (AMO, Russian Автомобильное Московское Общество (АМО) — Moscow Automotive Enterprise). The plans were to produce Fiat F-15 1.5 ton trucks under license. Because of the October Revolution and the subsequent Russian Civil War it took until 1 November 1924 to produce the first vehicle, the AMO-F-15. After Nikita Khrushchev denounced Stalin's cult of personality in 1956 the name was changed again to Zavod Imeni Likhacheva, after its former director Ivan Alekseevich Likhachev.