Lancia IZ Armoured Car

[David]

The Lancia was the most important Italian armoured car of the First World War - it was built in some numbers and used against the Austrian and later German forces on the front on the north-east borders of Italy. Some were captured by the Germans and used to equip some armoured car units of their own, and Lancia armoured cars were used to train and equip American troops in Italy. The basis of these cars was the Lancia 1Z 25/35-h.p. light truck chassis with pneumatic tyres, dual at the rear. The construction of the armoured cars was undertaken by the Ansaldo engineering firm, of Turin, and the vehicles were, in fact, sometimes known as Ansaldos or Ansaldo Armoured Cars. The layout of the design was fairly conventional, the only really unusual feature being the small turret (with one Saint Etienne water-cooled machine-gun) superimposed on the larger turret equipped with another two Saint Etienne machine-guns of the same type. The ground clearance of the Lancia armoured car was particularly good for a car of the period. A feature also used in other Italian armoured cars was the rails, incorporating wire cutters at the tip of the rails, to enable the vehicle to pass through wire obstacles stretched across roads. The Lancia armoured car had a roomy hull (of chrome-nickel steel) and this was needed to accommodate the large crew consisting of the car commander, driver, three gunners and a mechanic. The car weighed about 3950 kg. loaded including 25.000 rounds of ammunition. The engine of about 60 b.h.p. (35 h.p. nominal) gave a maxi­mum speed of 70 km/h and the car had a circuit of action of about 500 kms. It had a crew of 6 men. The length was 5.240m, the width 1.9m, the height 2.89m, and the wheel base 3.570m. The 1Zm model of the Lancia 1Z armoured car was almost identical in appearance to the first type except that the small turret was eliminated and the third machine-gun was mounted instead in the back of the hull, facing rearwards. Lancia 1Z & 1Zm armoured cars were long in service and some were still in use by the Italian Army in East Africa in the Second World War. They were also used in the Spanish Civil War. For more info on the Lancia 1Zm, click here!