ALL LATIL MILITARY VEHICLES 1914-1940 - VOL. 1. TRUCKS AND ROAD TRACTORS - Vauvillier Collection

Does anyone remember that Georges Latil, thanks to his patent registered in 1897, was the forerunner of the famous front-wheel drive? At that dawn of the automobile age, the concept had a modest objective: to transform a horse-drawn vehicle by replacing its team of horses with a motorised front axle driving the front wheels which, remaining steerable, became driven. This simple and ingenious invention would ensure the manufacturer's renown; during the Great War he supplied nearly three thousand Latil TAR "total adhesion" (four-wheel drive, all-steering) artillery tractors.

Then, after the victory, the Suresnes manufacturer continued to develop, improve and modernise its flagship model, while broadening its range, both in all-wheel-drive tractors and in conventional road vehicles of all tonnages. Although relatively modest in quantitative terms, the Latil military production is so rich in models and variants that it requires two volumes of our collection to be covered in its entirety. In this first volume, we have chosen to present the entire TAR family, including its smaller sibling the TP carrier tractor, as well as all the trucks and light trucks that served under the colours from the dawn of the 20th century until the armistice of June 1940.

A historical documentation paying tribute to the French automotive industry in the service of national Defence.

This work is the fifth in a collection intended to cover all vehicles used by the French army. Each highly visual volume presents all models in a systematic manner, following a chronological classification, with the principal ones reproduced in their period colours.

The author:

François Vauvillier, born in 1951, founder in 1984 of the publishing house Histoire & Collections, today editor-in-chief of GBM, has established himself over the decades as the foremost specialist in French military vehicles of the first half of the 20th century. Having "fallen into the pot" at a very young age, the author published, in the 1980s, two reference works on the uniforms of the French army in 1940 before turning to motorised subjects with L'automobile sous l'uniforme 1939-1940 (1992) and, more recently, Tous les Blindés français 1914-1940 (H&C 2014).