THE PANHARD EBR. A DISTINCTLY FRENCH INNOVATION

Emerging from the Second World War, the Panhard company successfully responded to an ambitious Army programme for an engin blindé de reconnaissance (armoured reconnaissance vehicle), abbreviated EBR. In doing so, it would quite literally make this EBR acronym its own, offering the armoured cavalry a mount that was both original and innovative.

In post-war France, the almost avant-garde nature of this combat vehicle is all the more remarkable in that it draws on studies initiated as early as 1938 and interrupted by the German invasion. Ahead of its time, its entry into service was not without difficulties, but its characteristics — exceptional in many respects — allowed it to overcome them and to remain, until the early 1980s, the reference vehicle for French reconnaissance units.

The EBR had until then never been the subject of a study as comprehensive in both its technical and operational aspects.

This work, the result of its author's meticulous research and richly illustrated with archive photographs, brings this exceptional vehicle out of the shadows. Page by page, you can discover this transformation illustrated by archive photographs and colour profiles. These will also allow you to appreciate the camouflage schemes, unit markings and graffiti that mean that, by the end of the conflict and within any given unit, virtually no two tanks looked alike.