Alvis Salamander

The Alvis Salamander was a six-wheel-drive airport crash tender with off-road ability, developed in 1956 on the same Alvis six-wheel-drive chassis and parts as the Saladin armoured car and Saracen carrier. It in turn led to the Stalwart load carrier. Power came from a 6,515 cc Rolls-Royce B81 straight-eight engine rated at 211 brake horsepower at 4,000 rpm. The firefighting equipment came from the Pyrene Company, which could produce 7,500 gallons of foam a minute, and it carried a crew of six. In all 125 were built and used by the Royal Air Force, as the Salamander and Pyrene Mark 6, and by the Royal Canadian Air Force, until vehicles such as the Thornycroft Nubian Pyrene Mark 7 replaced them from the late 1970s.