A blast from the military past

 

I was amused to come across a publicity video from Toyo Tires, made several years ago, showing a highly modified and upgraded British Ferret scout car going flat-out across country and over dirt roads.  It's certainly an impressive performance, particularly considering that the original Ferret, as built, could do perhaps 45-50 mph over such surfaces at the best of times.

You can read more about the modifications to the Ferret in this article.  Here's a "making of" vignette showing how they prepared for that video.

I found it entertaining because I remember the Ferret in its military version.  South Africa bought several hundred of them, and operated them into the 1970's until they were replaced by locally built and improved variants of the Panhard AML series armored cars.  The little Ferret (less than 4 tons in weight, as I recall, and smaller than a US HUMVEE) struggled to cope with the thick, soft sand of African trails, and its poorly ventilated steel hull and very cramped interior (without air-conditioning) produced nightmarish conditions for its crews in the scorching heat of an African summer.  Still, it kept going, and did reasonably effective work for a couple of decades before it grew too long in the teeth for further service.

In case you don't know the Ferret, here's Jay Leno with an example from his extensive collection.  I chose this video rather than more "historic" ones on YouTube because it's simply more entertaining.

They look ridiculously simple in comparison to today's military vehicles, but for their time they were front-line technology, and served all over the British Commonwealth.  I daresay many old soldiers still remember them with affection.

Peter