AM General HMMWV

AM General’s HMMWV replaced the M151 jeep, the M880 pick-up and the M792 ambulance with one chassis: independent suspension, portal-geared hubs, 16 inches of clearance, a 130-inch wheelbase and a body wide enough to be stable and low enough to fly inside a Chinook. The Gulf War of 1991 made it the American army’s face and prompted the civilian Hummer.

Iraq exposed the unarmoured hull to roadside bombs; the M1114, built since 1996 for military police, became the standard patrol vehicle and the Expanded Capacity Vehicles of 2005 carried the armour properly. The weight and the losses made the case for the MRAPs and then the JLTV, which replaced the Humvee in front-line units from 2016 — but it is expected to serve to at least 2050 and AM General still builds it for export.