Bespoke Russian car builder, ZIL was commissioned to produce this weird-looking off-road, troop transporter for the Russian military.
CONCEPT VEHICLES rarely make it to production without a fair bit of tinkering, and you’d have to hope that will be the case with this Russian military concept produced by ZIL. See, while it looks all Batman-Tumbler-esque those large windows, the basic four-cylinder turbo-diesel, drum brakes and leaf sprung bum will make it less Humvee wannabe and more sitting duck on a battlefield.
Although, reports suggests, and this hasn’t been confirmed by ZIL, that the chassis is based on that of the US Army’s standard issue Humvee.
According to reports, this ZIL was apparently commissioned to fill the Russian military’s need for a lightweight, armoured off-road troop transporter, and with this thing reportedly weighing only 2.5 tonnes, it certainly got the lightweight part right. Just how armoured the thing is, is hard to say, although we’d suspect not very. That said, the underneath of the thing is apparently designed to deflect mine blasts.
Inside, as you can see from the photos, there are a number of different seating positions with all of the doors, bar the rear ones, opening up in gullwing fashion. The rear doors swing out with a set of steps that drop down allowing easier access into the back seats. Some reports suggest there two rear facing seats in the back allow for rear gunners, but it would be unlikely soldiers would fire out from inside the vehicle, rather it’s more likely to allow fast access out of the vehicle to secure a site for the rest of the troops to pile out of the thing.
What do you think, cool or not?
