Pinzgauer in British Service ~ Part One

With UK MoD commencing its quest to replace the ageing Pinzgauer utility vehicle in British service it is time we looked at the Alpine workhorse, writes Bob Morrison.

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It is not only the now 25+ year old military Land Rover Defender (aka Wolf) fleet that the UK MoD badly needs to replace, not least because some original manufacturer spare parts are becoming rarer than rocking horse droppings, but their Pinzgauer fleet is also fast approaching its already extended Out of Service Date or OSD. See Light Mobility Vehicle Contenders at DVD 2024 for more on this topic.

UK Pinzgauer background: In late November 1991, after the initial evaluations following Gulf War One concluded, the Ministry of Defence put out an Invitation to Tender for the replacement of approximately 6463 General Service load and personnel carrying vehicles and variants in the 500kg to 1400kg payload range with IMMLC (Improved Medium Mobility Load Carrier) capability. Three separate sub-categories were specified, namely: Truck Utility Light (TUL*) with a minimum payload of 500kg, to replace short wheelbase (88″) Land Rovers; Truck Utility Medium (TUM*) with a minimum payload of 1200kg, to replace long wheelbase (109″) Land Rovers; and Truck Utility Medium [Heavy Duty] (TUM[HD]) to primarily replace specialist Forward Control 101 Land Rovers in use with the Airborne, Airmobile and Commando brigades.

Originally nineteen manufacturers or suppliers expressed interest in tender LV2a/088, but in the end only Land Rover, with its Defender 90 and Defender 110 model was called forward for a series of Battlefield Mission evaluation tests to fulfil the TUL and TUM requirement. Steyr-Daimler-Puch Fahrzeugtechnic (SDP) of Graz in Austria was invited to submit examples of its 4×4 Pinzgauer 716M for the TUM[HD] requirement, and Land Rover were requested (even though they had misgivings and would have much preferred not to accept the request) to produce a wide-bodied variant of the Defender 110 for trials in this category.

As expected by most experienced commentators, the compact forward control (i.e. cab-over-engine design) Pinzgauer 716M performed better than the conventional bonneted Defender 110 in the TUM[HD] category, which was dimensionally constrained by a shipping envelope requirement for a maximum length of just 4,800mm. Contract numbers were insufficient to make designing and crash testing a forward control Defender feasible and in 1992 UK MoD refused to forecast if there would be an ongoing requirement for this category of vehicle, so Land Rover was naturally unwilling to make the major investment needed to produce a new vehicle for such a small contract where they knew there was already a capable competitor vehicle in the Pinzgauer.

Outreach plc, of Larbert in Scotland, who were UK importers of the Pinzgauer, oversaw the tender and trials process on behalf of SDP but by the time that the MoD formally announced, on 28th July 1994, that the Austrian vehicle had won the contract the company Automotive Technik Ltd. had been set up in the UK to handle the supply. In total 394 vehicles were ordered under that first procurement and by June 1995 the new vehicle had been not only been fully accepted for service but was deployed to the Former Yugoslavia in United Nations colours as prime mover for the 105mm Light Gun.

First Generation Pinzgauer

The original Steyr-Daimler-Puch Pinzgauer 4×4 (and 6×6) evolved around 1970 from the Austrian company’s earlier and smaller Haflinger 4×4; Haflinger and Pinzgauer being breeds of horse found in Tyrolean and Alpine regions. Both vehicles were designed with a central tube ‘backbone’, rather than a ladder type, chassis and portal axles. The first generation Pinzgauer, primarily used by Austrian and Swiss Armed Forces, was powered by a four-cylinder petrol engine but the second generation Pinzgauer was redesigned in the 1980s to allow a six-cylinder Volkswagen diesel engine and four-speed ZF automatic gearbox to be fitted.

Land Rover TUM [HD] Trials Contender

To meet the MoD request that they submit trials prototypes for all three TUL/TUM categories, Land Rover cobbled together a soft top Defender 110 variant with a slightly wider rear body and side-hinged rear tailgate plus a higher line canopy frame over the cargo compartment. During trials the Pinzgauer TUM [HD] out-performed the Land Rover wide-body conversion, which was never put into series production.

*Once ordered the new TUL and TUM fleet was redesignated by MoD as TUL HS and TUM HS (with HS denoting Higher Specification) to avoid confusion with the earlier Land Rover Defender models, some of which served alongside the new vehicles well into the second decade of the new millennium.

[images © Bob Morrison]

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See also :-

• Pinzgauer in British Service ~ Part One
• Pinzgauer in British Service ~ Part Two
• Pinzgauer in British Service ~ Part Three
• Pinzgauer in British Service ~ Part Four (6×6)