A military armored also spelled armoured car is a wheeled armoured fighting vehicle , historically employed for reconnaissance , internal security , armed escort, and other subordinate battlefield tasks.
It also found favor with several colonial armies as a cheaper weapon for use in underdeveloped regions. Some equipped with heavier armament could even substitute for tracked combat vehicles in favorable conditionsβsuch as pursuit or flanking maneuvers during the North African campaign. Since World War II the traditional functions of the armored car have been occasionally combined with that of the armoured personnel carrier , resulting in such multipurpose designs as the BTR or the Cadillac Gage Commando.
During the Middle Ages, war wagons covered with steel plate, and crewed by men armed with primitive hand cannon , flails and muskets , were used by the Hussite rebels in Bohemia. These were deployed in formations where the horses and oxen were at the centre, and the surrounding wagons were chained together as protection from enemy cavalry. Wells ' short story " The Land Ironclads " provides a fictionalized account of their use.
The Motor Scout was designed and built by British inventor F. Simms in It was the first armed petrol engine-powered vehicle ever built. The vehicle was a De Dion-Bouton quadricycle with a mounted Maxim machine gun on the front bar. An iron shield in front of the car protected the driver. However, these were not "armored cars" as the term is understood today, as they provided little protection for their crews from enemy fire. At the beginning of the 20th century, the first military armored vehicles were manufactured by adding armor and weapons to existing vehicles.
The vehicle had Vickers armor, 6 mm 0. Another early armored car of the period was the French Charron, Girardot et Voigt , presented at the Salon de l'Automobile et du cycle in Brussels , on 8 March One of the first operational armored cars with four wheel 4x4 drive and partly enclosed rotating turret, was the Austro-Daimler Panzerwagen built by Austro-Daimler in It was armored with 3β3.
