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Edit:- The mystery has likely been solved! Scroll down to one of my later posts for a full breakdown.

I've been poking around the early history of armoured cars, and think that I may have found something of interest to those of you gentlemen.

The first armoured car (as far as I can tell), is usually considered to be Simm's Motor War Car:-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_War_Car

To quote from a web source:-

]In 1896, E. J. Pennington, an American, designed (but never built) a steam-powered armored car equipped with metal skirts and two machine guns, one facing forward and the other facing to the rear. Three years later, English engineer F. R. Simms took a small steam-powered, four-wheeled vehicle and added a bulletproof shield as well as a machine gun. In 1902, Simms introduced the first armored car powered by an internal combustion engine.

You'll find that statement echoed elsewhere, for example, in the RUSI journal:-
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03071846009421110?journalCode=rusi19



But having just gone through some of my recent documentation I've collected, I'm not sure it's actually true. I think that E.J Pennington may have done more than just theorise, and may have actually ordered a model of his car from Vickers in 1899/1900. This quote is from an account I've collected by a Vickers employee on their early armoured car work:-

Our first armoured car, produced in 1900,and known as the "Pennington" was a small car with a 16 h.p. engine and a crew of three. The armour was .25-inch thick and in the form of a skirt which completely surrounded the chassis. The armament consisted of two Maxim machine guns protected by shields. A second model was designed but never built, since the project aroused little interest. This second car was said to have been more heavily armed and armoured.

This sketch was attached to the document.



One source usually does not a 100% guarantee create, but I located the following elsewhere. Taken apparently from the Preston Guardian on 5th May 1900:-



Whilst he was very clearly lying about the War Office orders, I think that in light of the new evidence, he may well have been telling the truth about what he was driving. Given Vickers built the subsequent Simms car too (the above source mentions it a page later), it would make sense for Simms to have approached them if they already had experience in that sort of thing. I may have to hunt around and see if I can find anything else when I have the time. It might be a mild historical feather in my cap to have rediscovered the world's first armoured car.

Given that I've uncovered the hitherto-unknown document trail for a special kind of pocket range-finder issued to the Channel/Mediterranean Fleets in 1900 as well this week, I'm doing well!

That was fasinating. Thank you for sharing your work free of charge!

It's interesting for certain and thanks for sharing. I'm personally a little more sceptical since what you've posted prompted me to do a very little light digging to see what else if anything I could find online and the following comment about Pennington from his Wikipedia entry stood out:

He was regarded by many as a fraud on account of his unproven claims and business practices, yet he never spent any time in prison as a result of these accusations

So at the moment what it seems like there is a sketch and a claim made by one man which was backed up by a second man of dubious trustworthiness and which is already definitely around half, if not entirely, untrue.

Do you have any more information from the Vickers source?

simonr1978 wrote:

As that seems quite close to the sketch posted it sounds to me like despite the claims of Pennington and the un-named driver, the sketch was about as close as it got to reality.

I'd demur at the moment. Why? Because the first account (check the quote box) actually comes from the Vickers archive itself (I was in Cambridge last year researching their gun mountings). It's a printed account written a few decades later (I highly suspect for advertising purposes) about the work Vickers has done in the past on armoured cars, and it actually proceeds to list the subsequent Simms car they they built after the Pennington, along with photographs and suchlike. It also very explicitly states that the Simms' car was 'similar in design to Pennington' and traces the development of the armour detail from the Pennington model to the Simms. Then it goes into other WW1 cars built by Vickers and so forth. The sketch included is also quite different to the existing 1896 sketch you can find of Pennington's original proposed vehicle.

Given that this account was written within living memory of the time period by a Vickers employee, with the (arguably) official blessing of the company, by someone able to talk to others who would have been there (I know as a fact several of them were still about), and furthermore lists many other historically veriably accurate details of subsequent models of armoured car? The chance of it being made up or mistaken is small. Not impossible, but small. Given that I've managed to procure another separate source mentioning a car of that model according to the inventor's designs in the same year, that chance is further reduced, even if that second source is clearly unreliable in some aspects.

I am not saying that it is guaranteed, but right now, I'd peg the odds at being about 90%. I'll likely go back and go through Vickers' minute book for that year (one of the few to have survived) next time I'm in the Cambridge. See if I can find some additional references. I might be able to pick something up from the WO papers in the National Archives (Director of Artillery's papers perhaps????)

Interesting stuff though regardless!

EDIT:- I think I may have tracked down another newspaper source. I'll refrain from posting this one though, don't want anyone to scoop me!

EDIT again: Another interesting tidbit; I've corroborated that Pennington himself was actually in the UK for the second half of 1899. So he was in England at the time he'd have needed to commission Vickers to build the thing.

Most cool

 Ketara wrote:

EDIT again: Another interesting tidbit; I've corroborated that Pennington himself was actually in the UK for the second half of 1899. So he was in England at the time he'd have needed to commission Vickers to build the thing.

Which IMO makes it seem odd that the guy done for "Furious driving" was doing so in Brooklyn according to the article snippet. It just seems a bit strange to me that Pennington would get Vickers to build the thing here then ship it all the way across the Atlantic to New York to test it. It's certainly not impossible but it does seem a bit unlikely IMO.

You're obviously in a far better position to judge the relative reliability of this than I, but the only other image I've been able to find Googling various combinations of "1896 Pennington Fighting Autocar" apart from what looks like a machinegun mounted on a couple of bicycles is a drawing of what looks like an identical vehicle from a different angle. In my admittedly limited experience too human memory is very, very fallible and it's certainly far from impossible that an account written decades later might be misremembering events, even with Vickers official blessings behind it. Of course if it turns out that it's mentioned in Vickers minutes book or some other contemporary document, or if an actual photo were to exist then that'd be a different matter entirely.

From my admittedly amateur standpoint however I'm much less than 90% convinced, maybe I'm just way too cynical though!

(Sorry if I'm sounding a bit negative about this here, I genuinely don't mean to be!)

simonr1978 wrote:

Which IMO makes it seem odd that the guy done for "Furious driving" was doing so in Brooklyn according to the article snippet. It just seems a bit strange to me that Pennington would get Vickers to build the thing here then ship it all the way across the Atlantic to New York to test it. It's certainly not impossible but it does seem a bit unlikely IMO.

From what I've been able to uncover, the gentleman in question tended to have a lot of harebrained schemes. He'd raise vast sums for cars that barely worked, and then ship them between the US and the Uk to compete in various contests. Or occasionally set up a company and have it fold. He'd actually shipped another car across to the UK for to try and beat a contest in 1899, that's why he was in the neighbourhood.

The 'furious driving' incident would have been done a few months after the vehicle was completed, so there would have been plenty of time to ship it back to the States,

You're obviously in a far better position to judge the relative reliability of this than I, but the only other image I've been able to find Googling various combinations of "1896 Pennington Fighting Autocar" apart from what looks like a machinegun mounted on a couple of bicycles is a drawing of what looks like an identical vehicle from a different angle. In my admittedly limited experience too human memory is very, very fallible and it's certainly far from impossible that an account written decades later might be misremembering events, even with Vickers official blessings behind it. Of course if it turns out that it's mentioned in Vickers minutes book or some other contemporary document, or if an actual photo were to exist then that'd be a different matter entirely.

From my admittedly amateur standpoint however I'm much less than 90% convinced, maybe I'm just way too cynical though!

(Sorry if I'm sounding a bit negative about this here, I genuinely don't mean to be!)

No, that's absolutely fine. I'm quite happy to accept I have questionable proof right now. Drawing on what I know of Vickers more generally, they didn't absorb Wolsely until the following year (1901), but they did have something of a reputation at the time for doing small scale experimental vehicles, like the Nordenfelt submarine. So that could have been a factor if he did select them to build this contraption.

I've actually got one of the Vickers minute books open at the moment (I pick up all sorts in my travels, forgot I had actually acquired them), but it's virtually completely obsessed with the matter of debentures and suchlike at a quick scan. They're not even mentioning their involvement in the Holland submarine licensing business, which would have been far larger in their financial calculations at that stage than a single test vehicle. The minute books are a reasonably complete run I believe, but the letter books (where one would hope to find this sort of thing) are another kettle of a fish altogether. The earliest surviving one is only from 1905, so way too late. I've got Saxton-Noble's letterbook to go through still, but I'm not hopeful. Albert Vickers barely left any paperwork at all meanwhile.

If he offered this car to the Government, I think that the most likely place to find more substantial corroborating evidence would be the WO papers; but it's hard to try and figure out which section he'd have submitted them to. A lot of experimental stuff went before the Director of Artillery and Stores, but there's no guarantee of that in the case of something like a motor vehicle. It's more likely to have been viewed by an independent officer who would have gone to Vickers to ascertain how the thing worked and then submitted a report; but finding out who that would have gone to (if it survived) will be a mission and a half. Especially since it'll be lumped in with all the Boer War stuff that would have been going on at the time.

As mentioned, I've found another newspaper report detailing roughly the same incident, but that's not much to go on. I might take a stab at the military trade journals? Arms and Explosives might detail it in some way, for example.

Anyway, I'm just rambling. You'll have to forgive me, sometimes I think as I type.

Long story short, I think the Vickers evidence is quite reliable judging the source, context, and level of detail, but trying to find sufficient evidence to buttress it into an article will likely be...challenging.

This is really interesting. Thank you for sharing.

I think I may have solved our little conundra. If you read the known history of the Simm's car, you'll see that it was ordered in 1899 by the War Office, but was delayed by technical failings and not ready until it was finally unveiled in 1902. So the contradiction at the moment rises from:-

(a) The name 'Pennington',
(b) The fact the Vickers history states this alternate car was built in 1900, and
(c) the technical mismatches - The Simms car of 1902 has two Maxim's and a pom-pom for example, whereas this earlier car only had the two Maxims (it also had a different armour arrangement)

However! I have uncovered an eyewitness testimony from 1899 discussing Simm's drawn up plan for an armoured car which matches the earlier description in terms of armament, along with an explicit mention of it being 'built to order by Messrs Vickers'. Reading a bit more closely into the wording of the earlier document from Vickers, their 1900 car was also only "known as" the Pennington car. From these facts allied with the ones collected/mentioned earlier, yet another separate secondary newspaper source, and a later business biography, I can actually hypothesize what actually happened with a reasonable degree of accuracy (I'm drawing on about six different sources now). Here goes:-


In 1897, our friendly neighbourhood inventor man F.R. Simm's hired Vickers to build his 'Motor Scout' concept. He put it on display at various shows, and acquired much attention/notoriety from it.


At some point between 1898 and 1899, Simms would likely have seen Pennington's advertisements and concepts for his armoured car, which were released to the general public as far back as 1896. Pennington was advertising quite heavily in various motoring publications at this point in time using sketches likes these:-



By 1899, Simms had sat down with his Vickers collaborators and planned out a few new motorised war devices. One was an armoured train carriage, and another was a fully armoured car equipped with two Maxim machine guns. This car would have been known as the 'Pennington' type, as the initial design was largely cribbed from what could be seen in Pennington's advertisements. Having displayed this new design alongside his earlier Motor Scout at the Automobile Club show in Richmond in mid-June 1899, Simms attracted sufficient attention from the War Office to acquire a private order for the prototype. So he and Vickers set out to construct it, leading to a car built to this 'Pennington' design:-



It was built upon a custom Coventry built chassis, held two Maxim guns, and had a 16 hp Daimler engine equipped.This car was however, immediately rejected by the War Office in 1900 due to not offering sufficient firepower, protection and technical reliability. A second slightly amended design was drawn up by Simms, but was almost immediately dropped as not meeting the necessary military requirements.

Meanwhile, our good friend Pennington in the States had heard loosely about the deal with the War Office, and set out to try trial and promote his own version in the USA. Due to the fact he was more scheister than mechanic however, his resulting machine, a modified version of his 'torpedo' car, was more menace than anything (hence the fine for 'furious driving'). As he knew the first Simms car was based loosely off of his design he began to claim (if inaccurately) that the War Office was ordering versions of his car.

It was at this stage, in 1900, that Simms and Vickers would appear to have gone back to the drawing board altogether. As the engine and chassis would still have been usable, they set out to rectify the faults raised by the War Office, and stripped the original machine down. They thickened the armour slightly, added on a pom-pom, a new gearbox, a protective skirt of chainmail, and various other sundries. The finished machine was then exhibited at Crystal Palace in 1902.



This wasn't the final model by a long shot however, with a further two prototypes developed by Simms using the same chassis over the next year. He went on to strip the pom-pom back off again, and upgrade the Maxim shields to full on gun turrets, as well as adding his own home-designed bastardised submarine periscope. Here's a picture I've found in my own documentation of his Mk III car.



Virtually ignored, this particular vehicle was potentially the very first vehicle to have rotating turrets.


So yes! Still all new and interesting, even if not quite what I thought. I'm going to carry on piecing together a few more odds and sods and try and get it published in the next year or two.

Thanks Ketara, very informative!

You just keep on posting here more often, yes?

I love this sort of thing, poking through old records can be so fun

I feel I should add the caveat that I cannot absolutely guarantee the above chain of events as things stand. But it's the only narrative that squares all the relevant facts I've brought to light thus far.

For example, I know as an absolute fact that Simms was displaying a design functionally identical to the 'Pennington' design at the Automobile Club in 1899 alongside several others; and that Vickers was soliciting orders for them. Once you incorporate the other known facts regarding this 1899 design being identifiably different to the 1902 model (but very similar to the widely advertised and traceable Pennington design), and the story from the Vickers archive about their first armoured car being 'known as' the Pennington and built in 1900, but being a failure, it begins to make sense.

Given the obviously similar shapes and sizes of this original 1900 'Pennington' model to the 1902 Simms version? Along with the fact that the engine of both models are of identical power and the standard hull plating of identical thickness? It makes good solid business sense that the 1900 version was simply just stripped down and rebuilt into the 1902 model. As we know the engine was shipped in specially (Daimler's biography), Vickers wouldn't have wanted to just leave an expensive custom-built prototype lying around aimlessly; they'd have just repurposed and kept working on the old one.

This chain of events would also account for the lack of photographs of the car in its 1900 state; it being just a prototype shown off solely to the War Office after all. It wouldn't have been intended for public display or advertisement. And since it was stripped down and rebuilt at least twice more, the lack of any physical surviving specimen of the 1900 model is also accounted for.

To sum up, whilst not 100% verifiable, there are sufficient corroborating facts and sources in place that I feel confident it is the most likely sequence of occurrences. I'll still try and dig up something from the WO papers over the next year or so to finish up though, or some people might still have doubts.

It is a fascinating piece of research. The Simms was a big old beast of a vehicle, and with cruiser style bow actually begins to look like some kind of Victorian gunboat on land. The eventual tanks of WW1 of course were at one point known as landships. I bet it had a rotten cross-country performance, though.

Armored Cars appear even as early as 1900. but ...

By the inception, which roles did the designers want these vehicles to be? will they intend these vehicles to replace cavalry completely or they just want these things to supplement cavs?
Back then no one really have any conceptions of motorized Helepolis.

Did Pennington concieved this design?

 Ketara wrote:

In 1897, our friendly neighbourhood inventor man F.R. Simm's hired Vickers to build his 'Motor Scout' concept. He put it on display at various shows, and acquired much attention/notoriety from it.

I see that the Russians are watching our forum for ideas! Taken from the parade of latest Russian military tech, the AM-1:-

ู^ That's not Armored Car. that's Armed car :lol:

Actually this is a strike vehicle. not sure if Americans have any conceptions of this little combat quad? AFAIK they used Dune Buggy as strike vehicle.

It is not even a car
I know the US Army uses quads, but I don't think they have mounted machine guns. And to be honest, I don't really see the use of a mounted machine gun on a quad. Quads aren't meant to engage in combat. They are reconnaissance vehicles, not combat vehicles, and putting a machine gun on it won't change that. They are just way too exposed for a fire support platform. Mounting a machine gun on a quad just seems like a waste of resources.

That said, the quads did call to my mind images of the iconic tachanka, which is good, because there is a catchy civil war song about them:

Leonardo da Vinci was working on something

Really armored cars are just a logical continuation of armored wagons, which had been loosely experimented with for hundreds of years.

It really took the ability of protecting your means of propulsion for the idea to be viable. A horse on the outside of your mobile fortress is an obvious and fairly inescapable weakspot. Its only once you can make a motor that you make your initial idea a truly viable one.

So if we go by that, the first "Armored Cars" were made in the 1400s or possibly earlier.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
It is not even a car
I know the US Army uses quads, but I don't think they have mounted machine guns. And to be honest, I don't really see the use of a mounted machine gun on a quad. Quads aren't meant to engage in combat. They are reconnaissance vehicles, not combat vehicles, and putting a machine gun on it won't change that. They are just way too exposed for a fire support platform. Mounting a machine gun on a quad just seems like a waste of resources.

That said, the quads did call to my mind images of the iconic tachanka, which is good, because there is a catchy civil war song about them:

The horse that goes down while pulling the wagon.... yeah.... I am pretty sure the Humane Society would not have liked that one bit.