In the automotive world, the phrase that a given all-terrain model is a "real tank" has become a worn-out cliché, used both with pure admiration and with a dose of irony. The statistics on the Old Continent are eloquent - today six out of ten newly diagnosed vehicles in Europe come from the SUV segment. The curious thing is that when the figures are put on the table, the metaphor for military power takes on quite real dimensions. It turns out that a number of modern road giants do not simply imitate combat equipment, but purely physically overshadow in length and volume some of the most famous tanks and armored personnel carriers that wrote history in the past century.
If we look at the dimensions of the current generation Mercedes-Benz GLE or the monumental BMW X7, we will find lengths of 4954 mm and 5181 mm, respectively. These figures look startling against the background of the German Panzer II - the light tank with which the Wehrmacht began World War II, whose total length varies between 4.64 and 4.81 meters. The Bavarian flagship X7 literally leaves it in its shadow. Even more striking is the case with popular pickup trucks in Europe such as the four-door Ford Ranger, which, with its 5.37 meters, turns out to be more massive than the next in the hierarchy, the Daimler-Benz Panzer III.
However, the real crown in the category of civilian mastodons goes to the other side of the ocean. The current edition of the Cadillac Escalade is an impressive 5766 mm long, over two meters wide and almost as high. This American road cruiser is absolutely equal in scale (excluding the length of the gun barrel) to the Soviet medium tanks of the Stalin era such as the A-20 and the legendary T-32 prototypes. Compared to them, historical French machines such as the Renault FT-17 from the First World War look like compact city cars. Even the American light tank M24 Chaffee from the General Motors factories, with its 5.03-meter chassis, is inferior in scale of the Ford Expedition family cruiser, which stretched 5.6 meters.
The paradox becomes even greater when we bring in modern technology. The Russian-developed unmanned robotic complex “Uran-9“ is exactly about 5 meters long, which makes it shorter than half of the luxury SUVs in the garages of the rich. Of course, modern main battle tanks designed for a crew of four, such as the American M1A2 Abrams or the Spanish Leopard 2E, remain unattainable with their nearly 10 meters total length including the gun, but the similarity in the scale of the civilian and military industries has never been so frightening.
The funny side of history shows that military engineers also had their own blunders in the style of “microcar”. A striking example is the experimental Kugelpanzer from the time of the Third Reich – literally a steel ball with chains for a scout, which today we can simply call an armored military version of the cute electric Microlino. One thing is certain, however - as buyers continue to seek security and dominance on the road, automakers will offer us ever larger civilian fortresses that have long since gone beyond the standards of ordinary parking spaces.