BTR-60

The BTR-60 is the first vehicle in a series of Soviet eight-wheeled armoured personnel carriers, developed in the late 1950s to replace the BTR-152 and first seen in public in 1961. Two design bureaus competed, GAZ under V. A. Dedkov and ZIL, with the army also testing several 8x8 prototypes. The GAZ design was chosen because it was the simplest and cheapest, and because of the plant production capabilities and experience. It put the crew in front, the troops in the middle and two six-cylinder GAZ-49B petrol engines side by side at the rear. The open-roofed BTR-60P entered production in 1960, followed by the roofed BTR-60PA in 1963 and the turreted BTR-60PB, which stayed in production until 1976 when the BTR-70 superseded it. Western estimates put GAZ output at around 25,000. Romania built a version as the TAB-71.