Panhard AM 40 P

The Panhard AM 40 P, also called the Model 201, was a French armoured car prototype completed by Panhard in 1939. It was designed under Louis Delagarde for a 1938 French Army competition for a powerful armoured car. Its eight wheel layout was unusual: bulletproof pneumatic steering wheels at the front and rear, and two pairs of metal wheels with grousers in the middle of the hull that could be raised on roads. The low hull held a driver in front and the engine at the rear, while the commander sat in a small central turret that pioneered the oscillating turret, two half cylinders that traversed together and elevated the gun by tilting the upper half. Armament was a 25 mm gun and a 7.5 mm Reibel machine gun, frontal armour was 60 mm, and the petrol engine of 85 horsepower gave up to 80 km/h and a range of 100 km. The army ordered 600 on 1 May 1940, but the fall of France meant only the prototype was built, and it was shipped to Morocco and its fate is unknown. Its ideas passed to the Panhard EBR and the AMX-13.