Einheits-PKW der Wehrmacht
German car and light truck family / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Einheits-Pkw der Wehrmacht – literally: "standard passenger motor-car of the Wehrmacht" – was the Nazi German plan for a new, multi-purpose fleet of all wheel drive off-road vehicles, based on just three uniform chassis, specifically designed and built for the Wehrmacht (the Nazi military). The plan was formulated in 1934, and vehicles were built from 1936 to 1943.
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The whole program yielded only some 60,000 four-wheel drive, off-road capable passenger cars, totaled across three weight-classes, plus about 13,000 6x6 trucks of 2.5 metric tons load capacity – but many of the 4x4 'Einheits'-passenger cars were deemed unfit for war-time service by the Wehrmacht internally, by 1938 – before World War Two in Europe had even started.
The new, standardized military vehicles were intended to replace the diverse fleet of two-wheel drive, militarized civilian vehicles previously procured by the Reichswehr – the Weimar Republic (1918–1933) predecessor of the Wehrmacht – with new cross-country mobile vehicles for military requirements in order to simplify logistics, maintenance and training by using standardized components.
The three main classes Leichter Einheits-Pkw, Mittlerer Einheits-Pkw, and Schwerer Einheits-Pkw (light, medium, and heavy standardized cars) were planned to use uniform chassis and mechanicals according to their weights and payloads, and each chassis would carry a number of different bodies for different purposes – similar to, but preceding the concepts of the U.S. made Dodge WC series, or the later High-Mobility, Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles (HMMWV / Humvee). The lightest of the three classes was also intended to serve as the U.S. 1⁄4-ton jeeps did.
Because of the insufficiently developed German automotive industry at that time, Hitler initiated the plan such that multiple small to medium size manufacturers should cooperate to manufacture the vehicles within each weight class, supplying uniform components (chassis, engines, bodies) as much as possible. However, the program was very ambitious (initially demanding not only independent suspension, but also four-wheel steering), which led to overly complex designs and meant that the program never came close to achieving its goals. As early as 1938, Hitler tasked Ferdinand Porsche to develop a better light, standardized, and sufficiently off-road capable car, using as much Volkswagen technology as possible: the VW Kübelwagen.