ACMAT VLRA (1967– )

René Legueu founded ALM at Meaux in 1948 to convert Panhard lorries to all-wheel drive; the TF4 of 1960 set the cab lines the VLRA kept, and the TPK range followed in 1961, sold mostly to civil buyers because the French Army showed little interest in it in the 1960s and 1970s. After the end of the Algerian war, whose colonial buyers had taken most of ALM's trucks, Paul Legueu moved the firm to Saint-Nazaire as ACMAT in 1965 and launched the VLRA on the VCOM base in 1967. In ACMAT's 1982 literature the 4×4 TPK 4.15 to 4.36 ran on 3,300 to 4,300 mm wheelbases with a naturally aspirated Perkins 6.354.4 six of 5.8 litres and 120 hp SAE, a four-speed gearbox and ACMAT's own two-speed transfer box and axles; the 6×6 TPK 6.35 to 6.50 had 138 hp.

Most of the output was exported: ACMAT quoted 93 per cent of sales abroad and at least 48 countries on five continents. French forces took the VLRA to Djibouti, Chad (Manta, 1983–84, and Épervier from 1986), the Central African Republic and the Gulf in 1991, and French special forces used it for close to sixty years until a last deployment on Barkhane in the Sahel; the 2016 PLFS contract for 202 special-forces trucks was placed to replace it. Arquus counts 12,000 of the first generation sold and 14,000 VLRA of both generations; the VLRA 2 succeeded it.