BTR-40

The BTR-40 is a Soviet open-topped, wheeled armoured personnel carrier and reconnaissance vehicle, nicknamed the Sorokovka in Soviet service. Its development began in 1944 at a design bureau led by V. A. Dedkov at the Gorky Automobile Plant (GAZ), as a successor to the BA-64B armoured car, and it used a shortened GAZ-63 four-wheel-drive truck chassis with a six-cylinder engine derived from the GAZ-12 ZIM unit. Its self-supporting body was new for Soviet vehicles, and it could carry up to eight equipped soldiers or one tonne of cargo behind 6 to 8 mm of armour. GAZ produced it from 1950 to 1960. It was replaced in the carrier role by the BTR-152 and in the scout car role by the BRDM-1, and it served with Soviet allies including East Germany and North Korea, where it first saw combat. China built a copy as the Type 55.