A light armoured car on a 2.5 m wheelbase: 4×4, three crew, 5.5 tonnes, 5.11 m long overall, 1.97 m wide and 2.07 m high, on a 90 hp air-cooled Panhard flat-four, 100 km/h and 600 km. 4,812 were built between 1960 and 1987, in two principal turrets: the AML-60 with a 60 mm breech-loading mortar and twin 7.62 mm machine guns, and the AML-90 with a 90 mm low-pressure gun.
MODEL LINEAMLBUILT BYPanhard, Marolles-en-HurepoixPRODUCED1960–87OPERATED INFrance, Saudi Arabia, IraqPRODUCTION4,812LAYOUT4 wheels · 98.4″
The record
Panhard designed the AML in 1959 for the French Army, which took it into service in 1961 and withdrew the last in 1991, keeping about three hundred in reserve as late as 1995; the Mobile Gendarmerie ran more than a hundred in nineteen squadrons. Its welded hull of thirteen pieces shared 95 per cent of its automotive parts with the Panhard M3 personnel carrier, and at 5.5 tonnes it could be flown in by Transall, Noratlas and Breguet 941 aircraft. Fifty-four governments and other forces used it, from the Algerian War, the Portuguese colonial wars and the Six-Day War to the Lebanese civil war, the Chadian–Libyan conflict, the Iran–Iraq and Gulf wars and Yemen. South Africa built about 1,600 under licence as the Eland. The ERC, the AMX-10RC and the VBC-90 replaced it in France.
OPERATED INFrance, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Ireland, Portugal, Israel, Lebanon, Morocco, Yemen, Argentina, Chad, South Africa
STATUSout of production; still in service with several armies
RECORD KINDBase model
MODEL LINEAML
FAMILYAML
WHEELS4
NOMINAL WHEELBASE98.4″
BODY STYLEAML-90 (90 mm gun turret)
VARIANTS2
Catalogue fields describe the vehicle's structure and body as this registry records it. They are not certified factory measurements, and no performance figures are published here.
Body styles & colours
Body style
Factory colours
Vert PIR OTAN (NATO green)
Sable beige PIR (sand beige)
Codes on hover. Hex values are representative approximations of period paint unless a source states a measured value.
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