A tale of two Autocars

 Round about 2008 I decided to scratch-build an Armoured Autocar for my WWI Canadian army.  The Armoured Autocar was built by the Autocar truck company of Pittsburgh. Interestingly, Autocar still exists!  The armoured Autocars provided to the Canadian army were made by adding boilerplate armour to a standard Autocar truck chassis.

Most of my research was from The Armoured Autocar in Canadian Service by Cameron Pulsifer, published by Service Publications.  The book is a great reference and includes scale drawings at the centre of the book that I used to calculate the dimensions for the armour plate.

The Autocar was sent overseas in 1914, originally equipped with two Colt machine guns.  The Colt MGs were eventually replaced by Vickers MMGs, plus a Lewis gun mounted at the front of the vehicle. The vehicle had a crew of 8:  driver, commander plus three crew for each MG.  As there is no way I can fit that many in either of these models, my Autocars only have a driver, and two gunners.  

My scratch-build was based on a Model T Ford from Company B.  Using the Ford rather than an Autocar as a base meant that right from the start my model was a compromise with accuracy.  But it was a useful chassis for the main product, and the chassis is mostly hidden under the armour plate.  I think if it a bit like a movie production making an ersatz German Tiger tank out of a T-34 base!  My version of the model was built at 1:56, to match other vehicles in my collection.  The crew are Wargames Foundry.  

Many years later (2018, maybe?), First Corps ended up releasing their own version of the Armoured Autocar.  Their model is in 1:48, so obviously there is an obvious scale difference with my own build.  Note that the FC model only has two crew :)

Since the models are so visibly different, I decided that the FC model will represent the early version of the model to go with my early war army.  This version has the headlamps, and a much simpler paint scheme.  The scratch build is painted with the later insignia for the Automobile Machine Gun Brigade, based on the painting on the last surviving model on display at the Canadian War Museum.

On the left, all that text should be in a single line, but that is beyond my painting skills!

Here are a couple of shots with a Great War Miniatures sergeant to show relative scale.

The Armoured Autocar is a tragically underknown vehicle.  It served throughout the war, from 1914 to 1918.  It was very fortunate in that for most of the war, the vehicles were kept out of the front lines, as trench warfare was not conducive to wheeled vehicles.  The unit in which these vehicles served was also groundbreaking, as it was one of the first fully motorised units in war, as in addition to the armoured cars, there were also support vehicles to carry fuel and ammunition, and even an Autocar ambulance.  The Canadian Automobile Machine Gun Brigade showed itself to be extremely versatile, able to move very heavy machine guns around the Western Front.  Their moment of greatest glory came in the Spring 1918 Michael offensive by the German Army, when the CAMGB's mobility was instrumental in intercepting the attacking enemy forces. The cars were vulnerable but in the right place and the right time, they helped to stop the breakthrough.