Many, many years ago I was the proud owner of a 7 ton chunk of armour plate, affectionately known in the British Army as a Pig, or more formally as Humber Armoured Personnel Carrier.
This splendid vehicle boasted a completely waterproofed 4.75 Rolls Royce petrol engine (and by waterproof, I mean the entire engine was encased in a sealed steel box, with the various lines (fuel, air and exhaust) passing out through one way valves. So when one opened the bonnet, a tricky job in itself as it was made of thick bullet proof steel, one was confronted with a large, rounded pale green steel box, and no engine to be seen…
Curiously enough, it only had one set of gear ratios, no low gearing as one would expect to find on any vehicle that was designed to go off-road, but the engine was so powerful, and 1st gear so low, and as it was always in 4 wheel drive, it went perfectly happily over mud, small rivers and so on on its enormous “run-flat” tires.
Inside it was remarkably spartan, no unnecessary comfort for driver or passengers, and of course, being military, no seat belts to be seen.
Anyhow, you can find the specs for this small monster easily enough on line, so I shall stop going on about that side of the thing, and talk about what it was like to own and drive around in such a vehicle. It was in effect my car, as I had no other vehicle at the time, so I used it to drive to work every day, and to drive around at the weekends too. As one would in a normal car.
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