The closure of Slovak utility vehicle maker TAZ after the fall of Communism in 1989 put the brakes on the local economy of the town of Trnava.
But 16 years later, the auto industry is once again the driving force for the town's 70,000 residents.
France's PSA Peugeot Citroen will start production at a state-of-the-art assembly plant next year, eventually creating more than 5,000 jobs. Subcontractors are expected to supply another 1,500 jobs within two years.
The plant is expected to have annual capacity of 450,000 cars, with the French company employing a far greater number of workers than TAZ.
Throw in workers for new shops springing up and for several new smaller factories, and Mayor Stefan Bosnak predicts 10,000 new jobs by 2008.
"We will have by then exhausted our local workforce," he says happily. "People will be coming to Trnava for jobs."
Carmakers are coming in droves to central Europe, boosting economic growth and lowering unemployment in places like Trnava, about 40 kilometres northeast of Bratislava, where around 40 years of communism left behind crippled industries but educated, cheap and eager workers.
In Kolin, in the Czech Republic, a Toyota-built factory able to make 300,000 cars a year opened in February. By 2008, the region will produce more than three million vehicles a year, according to the Automotive Industry Association of Slovakia. Around one million are expected to roll off Slovak assembly lines alone, which will make this country of five million the world's largest auto producer per capita.
Propelled by foreign carmakers, Slovakia's economy, which stagnated in the 1990s, is growing at more than five per cent a year while unemployment is falling, from around 20 per cent in 2000 to just above 10 per cent today.
The automotive association expects 95,000 Slovaks - some four per cent of the workforce - to eventually be employed making cars.
Slovaks seem eager for the jobs. More than 30,000 people have expressed interest in working at PSA's factory, according to TASR news agency. On a recent weekday, men streamed in and out of a PSA work centre in Trnava, pausing to smoke cigarettes and talk about jobs at the French carmaker.
"PSA is a company with a future," said Stefan Harcar, 43, who was laid off five months ago from a machine-making factory and has not found work in 17 job interviews since.
Jobs in Slovakia's car industry are not a last resort for the unemployed like Harcar, though. They are plum opportunities, offering wages as much as 30 per cent higher than the average national wage, or roughly 22,000 crowns ($670) a month.
"If they hire me, I will immediately make more than I do at my current job, where I have been for seven years," said Martin Valovic, 27, a railroad signalman. "Every third person I know wants to work here."
The windfall is for both sides. The wages offered by the car plant may be well above the national average, but they are only a fraction of what PSA Peugeot would have to pay workers in western Europe.
Mr Valovic and others at the centre said they were not afraid the auto industry would one day move away and leave behind empty factories as happened in Detroit and Germany.
"Who knows what might happen in 15 years?" said Rastislav Remenar. "Carmakers coming here is good. The area is building up. Work opportunities are increasing. The standard of living is rising," he said.