A military armoredcar is a wheeled armored fighting vehicle, historically employed for reconnaissance, internal security, armed escort, and other subordinate battlefield tasks. With the gradual decline of mounted cavalry, armored cars were developed for carrying out duties formerly assigned to light cavalry. Following the invention of the tank, the armored car remained popular due to its faster speed, comparatively simple maintenance and low production cost. It also found favor with several colonial armies as a cheaper weapon for use in underdeveloped regions. During World War II, most armored cars were engineered for reconnaissance and passive observation, while others were devoted to communications tasks. Some equipped with heavier armament could even substitute for tracked combat vehicles in favorable conditions—such as pursuit or flanking maneuvers during the North African campaign.
The Leichter Panzerspähwagen was a series of light four-wheel drive armoured cars produced by Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1944.
AEC armoured cars are a series of British heavy armoured cars built by the Associated Equipment Company (AEC) during the Second World War.
The Ordnance Quick-Firing 6-pounder 7 cwt, or just 6-pounder, was a British 57 mm gun, serving during the Second World War as a primary anti-tank gun of both the British and United States Army. It was also used as the main armament for a number of armoured fighting vehicles.
The Ordnance QF 2-pounder, or simply "2 pounder gun", was a 40 mm (1.575 in) British anti-tank gun and vehicle-mounted gun employed in the Second World War.
The M8 light armored car is a 6×6 armored car produced by the Ford Motor Company during World War II. It was used from 1943 by United States and British forces in Europe and the Pacific until the end of the war. The vehicle was widely exported and as of 2024 still remained in service with some countries.
The Daimler scout car, known in service as the Daimler Dingo, is a British light, fast four-wheel drive reconnaissance vehicle also used for liaison during the Second World War.
The T17E1 armored car was an American armored car manufactured during the Second World War. It saw service with British and other Commonwealth forces during the war under the name Staghound, but was never used on the front line by US forces. A number of other countries used the Staghound after the war; some vehicles continued to serve until the 1980s.
The Marmon–Herrington armoured car was a series of armoured vehicles that were produced in South Africa and adopted by the British Army during World War II. They were also issued to RAF armoured car companies, which seem never to have used them in action, making greater use of Rolls-Royce Armoured Cars and other types.
The Type 92 heavy armoured car, also known as the Type 92 cavalry tank, was the Empire of Japan's first indigenous tankette. Designed for use by the cavalry of the Imperial Japanese Army by Ishikawajima Motorcar Manufacturing Company, the Type 92 was meant for scouting and infantry support. The Type 92 was thin armored and lightly armed. It was called a sōkōsha in Japanese due to political sectionalism within the Japanese Army. The same device was used in America with the M1 combat car.
The 37 mm gun M3 is the first dedicated anti-tank gun fielded by United States forces in numbers. Introduced in 1940, it became the standard anti-tank gun of the U.S. infantry with its size enabling it to be pulled by a jeep. However, the continuing improvement of German tanks quickly rendered the 37 mm ineffective and, by 1943, it was being gradually replaced in the European and Mediterranean theaters by the more powerful British-developed 57 mm gun M1. In the Pacific, where the Japanese tank threat was less significant, the M3 remained in service until the end of the war, but some 57mm guns were issued.
The Lanchester 6×4 armoured car was a British armoured car with a 6×4 drivetrain produced in limited numbers in the late 1920s and early 1930s. A heavier, more rugged development of the earlier Lanchester 4x2 armoured car, it remained in service with Territorial and colonial units until the early 1940s and saw action in the Battle of Malaya.
The Guy Armoured Car was a British armoured car produced in limited numbers during Second World War. The car saw limited action during the Battle of France.
Car, Armoured, Heavy (Aust), also known as Rhino, was an armoured car designed in Australia during the Second World War. Due to enemy action and design problems the project never got beyond a prototype stage.
The light tank Mk VIII (A25), also known as the Harry Hopkins, after American President Roosevelt's chief diplomatic advisor, and A25 from its General staff specification number, was a British light tank produced by Vickers-Armstrong during the Second World War. The Mk VIII was the last in the line of light tanks the company had built for the British Army, and was intended to be the successor of the previous light tank designed by Vickers-Armstrong, the Mk VII Tetrarch. A number of changes were made to the Mk VIII, most notably increasing its width, length and weight and also increasing the thickness of the armour. The design of the tank was submitted to the War Office in late 1941, with an initial order for 1,000 models being made by the Tank Board of the War Office in the same month, a number that increased to 2,410 in November. Production began in June 1942 but immediately began encountering problems with the tank, and a number of modifications had to be made to the design after complaints were made by the War Office and the Fighting Vehicle Proving Establishment. These problems were so acute that only 6 tanks had been produced by mid-1943, and only 100 when production ended in February 1945.
During the First World War, sixteen American Peerless trucks were modified by the British to serve as armoured cars. These were relatively primitive designs with open backs, armed with a Pom-pom gun and a machine gun, and were delivered to the British Army in 1915. They were used also by the Imperial Russian Army as self-propelled anti-aircraft guns.
The T27 Armored Car was a prototype armored car developed for the US Army in 1944 by the Studebaker Corporation. The T27 was an eight-wheeled vehicle, with the first, second and fourth pairs of wheels being powered. With a crew of four, the T27 was armed with two .30 caliber machine guns and a 37 mm cannon. Powered by a Cadillac gasoline eight-cylinder engine, two T27s were produced in 1944.
The T17 armored car, sometimes referred to as the M5 medium armored car and by the British as the Deerhound, was an American six-wheeled armored car produced during the Second World War.
The T23 armored car was an entry from the Fargo Division Chrysler for a new fast tank destroyer to replace the M6 37mm gun motor carriage in July 1941 initiated by the U.S. Army Ordnance Department. Required specification was to be able to withstand fire from a .50 in (12.7 mm) machine gun to the front and side from a .30 in (7.62 mm) machine gun. Although Dwight D. Eisenhower's headquarters were in favor, the design was rejected in favor of the Ford T22.
The White AM armoured car was a French First World War armoured car that was built on a commercial American White Motor Company truck chassis with armoured bodies supplied by the French firm Ségur & Lorfeuvre, it was used by the French military from its introduction in 1915. Between the wars the French military completely rebuilt the vehicles as the White-Laffly AMD 50 and the Laffly-Vincennes AMD 80, in these guises it served until at least 1943.
United States 