http://bringatrailer.com/2016/10/26/1966-willys-m274-a2-mule/
You know you want it! I know I do.
For $28K [or so] Go Here> http://mechanicalmulesofamerica.com/106Mule.html
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Loved those crazy things…You could do so much with them ! My favorite
version was this:
: 
The .50 cal Spotter Rife could reach out much more accurately than an M-14…
and without the 106… They had great utility around a Combat Base. Not to mention the Army loved 'em…Would trade almost anything for one. [They could not get parts like Marines could]…I know a couple that were worth a TD-18, LowBoy Trailer, and Tractor, Yep ! Those Mules were worth their weight in gold. [:-,]
It would come in handy around deer camp. And if you hit one with that recoilless rifle, I would suspect the venison is cooked to jerky and the head is ready to take straight to the taxidermist. No field dressing needed.
I can’t speak to Deer and the 106, but I’ve seen ‘enemy’ water buffalo take a round… Unfortunately, the Water Bo had to be’surveyed’…[C=:-)]
It looks like a golf cart for a course somewhere in Morocco.
Thank you 54Light! I remember what must have been one of the last “Mechanical Mules,” the Third LAAM Battalion at Cherry Point MCAS had one of them, although held together with spit and bailing wire at that point. (1976)
Hmm, deer hunting with a 106? Well, I suppose you could use the “Beehive” anti-personnel round, we used to call it “Hamburger Helper.”
“Hamburger helper” [bow]
Had a friend who served in Nam and this was his assigned weapon…mentioned the critter to another Marine friend and he did not think there was such an animal. Next day he came back and said “Oh I forgot, there was one!”
The “Mule” was cool, but what I REALLY want for Christmas (among other things) is a Renault FT-17 tank, World War One style.
Ever see one of those things? Obsolete as all hell, but cool beyond belief!
Not nearly as cool as this, though
Now THAT, unless I’m mistaken, is one of the original Walter Christie designs, maybe the “Christie Crawler?”
OK, I looked it up, it’s one of the original Soviet T tanks using the Christie suspension.
Walter Christie had a transverse-engined front-wheel-drive racing car in 1904! Wasn’t Christie’s tank too advanced for the US Army, so he sold it to Russia who used it for the basis of the T-34?
By the way, there’s a Renault WW-1 tank at the museum in Camp Borden north of Toronto. They have a rather large collection of tanks and such. Didn’t know the T-34 was that small.
Actually Christie’s tank was a good design, a millionaire US Army officer named Major George Patton financed the development and demonstrated it to the army brass, Mrs. Patton even drove it to show how easy it was to handle, but the problem was this was the 1920’s, and there was no money in the army budget to buy new tanks. As one of the generals present said to Patton, “It’s a beautiful tank Georgie, but we can’t buy it. I doubt we could buy it even if you drove it up to the Capitol loaded with votes.”
Remember, we’d just won the “war to end all wars,” and there wasn’t going to be any more wars. Really. The army had to use those WW1 Renaults into the 1930’s. Patton finally said “the hell with it” and went back to the cavalry, a good friend and fellow armor advocate named Dwight Eisenhower said the same thing and went back to the infantry.
And yes, the Russians were VERY interested in Christies designs, but in the end the only part of them they used were the suspension systems. Look at the tank pictured and then a picture of a T-34 and you can see the resemblance. By the way, I’ve been in a T-34. There was one on static outdoor display at The Basic School in Quantico VA (captured in Korea) when I was there in 1975 and it was OK to crawl around inside it if you wanted to. Man, it was TIGHT in there! I doubt most Russian tankers were taller than 5’8". I’m a six-footer and it was a bit of a squeeze for me. By the way, the turret traverse and gun elevation wheels still worked, albeit with a bit of effort.
I always wanted to take the Sherman that American Legion Post 703 has on display between here and my high school for a drive. Preferably through the high school…at least at one point in my life anyways. [swg]
Becky, I think we’ve ALL wanted to do that at one time or another.
However, my senior year there were some guys from the power mechanics class that drove a Volkwagen Beetle up and down the halls. Another story…
One of our teachers had a beetle…one night it wound up getting dissasembled and put back together in an inner courtyard…[:-^]
When I was in the navy, one of the chiefs on the base where I was had an old beetle. A bunch of us picked it up and wedged it between a telephone pole and the steps of the barracks with 1/2 inch to spare.
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My first car was a VW beetle, and let me tell you, you didn’t get into it, you put it on! Fun car to drive, but I wouldn’t go back to one now.
Is there anybody else here that remembers a time when if it was mentioned that somebody drove an imported car, the car was almost certainly a Volkswagen.