you
the peerless armored car was built at
the end of the first world war it was
actually built because they nearly ran
out of armored cars they used them all
up during the First World War but they
needed more mainly for Imperial policing
and the only arts they could come up
with was to use the peerless now the
British Army had stocks of peerless
lorries it was peerless model tc4 they
were built in Cleveland in Ohio and they
were shipped over here and used
extensively by the British Army so what
they decided to do was fit armored hulls
to a hundred of the chassis x' the
armored hulls were built by Austin's
that's why you've got this twin turret
layout which is exactly the same as the
Austin armored cars that we used in
Russia and with 17th battalion in France
in 1918 that the peerless was as I say a
post-war vehicle the lorry chassis
itself is powered by a four-cylinder 40
horsepower engine drive into a
four-speed gearbox and then chain drive
to the back axle a chain drive was quite
common in those days it was an
alternative to a live axle which is why
I'm the differential in it and it worked
just as well in fact he gave better
ground clearance and was very popular
but you don't find it around nowadays
it's gone completely but the chassis is
this tough old American lorry and it
will go on almost forever the vehicle
itself the whole thing weighs about six
tonnes in your notice that the body
doesn't go all the way to the back of
the chassis that's because the body was
designed originally for another type of
armored car and putting onto this thing
which was long and didn't work very well
the vehicles fitted with armor plate
eight millimeters thick which is pretty
well bulletproof about average for those
days Kevin a crew of four you'd have a
driver a car commander and then two men
in the machine gun turrets each Tower it
was armed with a Hotchkiss air-cooled
machine gun and meant thicker far in two
directions at once but the vehicle
itself
they were clumsy they were incredibly
slow as you can see they run on solid
rubber tires
and they were absolute disaster off the
road anywhere on the road they were fine
as long as you had time to wait for them
to arrive but off the road they just got
bogged down stuck so they were useless
really as armored cars that they were
made to last they would last forever in
fact many of the old fear that's lasted
well into the Second World War and this
one is in pretty well good working order
as far as we know you'll notice also
it's fitted with wooden spoked wheels
now originally they all had these that
the dear old Irish discovered that if
you had a long metal rod and put it
through the wheel you could break the
spokes and disable the vehicle so a few
bailiffs were produced with armored
spoked wheels metal wheels instead just
to defeat that idea but I've seen a
photo of a car with one of these wheels
smashed and it's quite dramatic what
happens it just collapses but that's
really all about the chassis of the
vehicle the body eight millimeter armor
plate the other thing about it is that
although you didn't actually have a
fifth man to do the job it was possible
for a man to leave his seat in the
turret and to go to a rear steering
position he's facing backwards he's got
a steering wheel in front of him and the
idea is if the car gets into serious
trouble in a street somewhere you can
reverse it out and the bloke consumed
he's going and steer it it meant that he
didn't have a clutch or a brake or
anything like that he was relying on the
driver to do those things and he had to
steer it where he could so it didn't
happen very often it wasn't really
successful when it was there it was an
option that was carried out in a number
of armoured cars between the wars that
the tearless was largely brute of a
thing at the at 19:20 about then we gave
some of them to the Irish Army when the
Free State was formed and the remainder
of the hundred stayed in Britain they
tried to sell them to the Indians at one
point but even India had more sense and
wouldn't have appear this because it had
no off road or climbing ability at all
and so they never went anywhere
they only stayed in Britain they used
you in the general strike for escorting
food convoys from the docks and they
were then passed on to the armored car
companies you see this one's got the
badge of 23rd armored car company which
was County of London yamanori and that's
how they serve between the wars just a
few of them to eat Joe Canary regiment
just to cover them until they've got a
better armored car which my goodness me
they deserved so that's the peerless is
not a tremendous amount you can say
about it but it's a tough old vehicle
it'll go on forever but you have to be
careful where you use
you