The Bantam BRC is an American off-road passenger car from the Second World War. The first copies of this car appeared in 1940, and serial production was carried out intermittently in 1940-1943. The car was powered by a single 4-cylinder engine with a capacity of 1.8 liters and 48 HP.
The Bantam BRC was commissioned by the US armed forces, which in 1940 reported a need for a new, lightweight all-terrain vehicle with a load capacity of up to 250 kilograms and all-wheel drive. The United States Department of War imposed an insanely short time to develop a prototype for a new car - only 49 days. However, the Bantam company based in Butler, Pennsylvania, was up to the task. Moreover, the vehicle constructed in such a short time turned out to be very successful: it had great off-road properties, good performance and was able to carry the load of 250 kilograms assumed from the beginning. Serial production was launched very quickly, and the main model produced was the BRC-40 version. Approximately 2,600 cars of this type were produced during it, but they were mainly produced for export: to Great Britain, the USSR and Yugoslavia. This was due to the fact that the US Army was equipped with the Willys Jeep MB as the basic off-road vehicle, which was clearly based on the Bantam BRC design.
Long before the start of World War II, the United States had a well-developed automotive industry, which in the 1920s and 1930s clearly dominated its European competitors. Considering the complete security of this industrial base in 1939-1945, it is not surprising that it was quickly converted to armaments production and, thanks to its enormous capabilities, made the US Army fighting in Europe or the Far East properly fully motorized and to a very high degree. mechanized. The saturation with motor vehicles was then much higher in the US Army than in the Soviet or German armies. In the case of infantry and artillery units, on the one hand, this translated into a very high mobility of these units, but on the other hand, it also allowed for a huge acceleration of actions. Among the several types of trucks used at that time (1941-1945) in the US Army, it is worth mentioning the GMC CCKW or the Studebaker US-6. The Willys Jeep light all-terrain vehicle also seemed to be ubiquitous. The degree of saturation with trucks and off-road vehicles of US Army units can be proved by the time of the "light" armored division from 1943, which assumed the possession of, among others, 460 trucks with a capacity of 2.5 tons and 449 Willys vehicles! Also, American infantry divisions were de facto motorized divisions, as they often used motor vehicles to cover longer distances.