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Whoa. Someone watched too many Mad Max movies.

That's no Panzer, that's just a combat-wagon. If a… special one.

(While the original Panzer was indeed a tank, it's established canon that "Panzer" is in the 2050s and later slang for a T-bird or other heavily-armed ground-effect vehicle)

~J

I know, I know. I just put the name the pic had. Still, I want a new shiny one.

?

~J

From what I remember they switched from using the term Panzer to T-Bird since it might have been a little too close to Walter Jon Williams 'Hardwired'. Although that's assuming that what people said about it was true and/or that my memory, never that great to begin with, isn't playing tricks on me.

2 words.

Rush Hour.

So its really an El Camino welded to a few railroad rails, the rear end of 'something' being driven by the ford 302, with an AA gun welded to that.

Bad ass.

I assume however it doesn't actually work.

I wonder if I can do something like that with my sentra.

that would be more of a tank hunter then a tank. why? because there isnt a turret

What are the railroad rails for? Maybe just to immobilize it? If it was originally rail-mounted, the gun would have to turn to be of any use...

The original SR in the late 1980's called the big LAV a "panzer" I think that caused a little ripple of complaints as it was potentially "nazi" to it was quickly changed to the 'thunderbird.'

The formal name is the GMC Banshee. I think this vehical really lost umph after a while, replaced with runners in armored Bulldogs or hugh's helo's turned into gunships. Serious corps used Citymasters and bigger stuff.

I know when I first read the Rigger in Vol 1 talking about "lifting skirts on a panzer" I thought of a german Panzer Mk IV, with a long barrell 75mm gun.

Sweet!

The question is whether Lone Star would stop it on the street or if they'd be too busy laughing.

Panzer is the German word for tank or armored vehicle, I am not really sure because it doesn't translate litterally. There is no copyright issue at all, nor did the word have anything to do with the Nazi party other than they were German.

The German govt. has a battalion of Panzers today, the Panzer 2000. It in fact is not a tank, but a piece of precision mobile artillery.

I have no idea why Fasa/Fanpro decided to stop using the slang term Panzer to describe the LAV's. It's a kick butt name.

Walter Jon Willams' Hardwired is probably one of the more famous depictions of a "panzer" in cyberpunk, and what he was talking about was skirt-equipped hovercraft. Shadowrun's t-birds are entirely different craft, and I'm glad they decided to run with a different name.

Besides, that means that I can have panzers AND t-birds in my game, just for kicks.

Panzerkampfwagen would translate literally as 'armored fighting vehicle'

Panzer: Armor/Shield

Kampf: Fight/Struggle

Wagen: vehicle/cart/wagon

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What is a Fampf? Never before heard/read that word. Most people call a "Panzer Leopard" simply "Leopard", as with the other vehicles mentioned. Only the animal name and everyone knows what you're talking about. Even guys who've never been in the army, like me. But we all played panzer quartett in our youth.

And in case there are still some questions about these German words, there's a brilliant Deutsch-English-Deutsch online dictionary at dict.leo.org.

"Panzer" has slipped back into the game. but in the early 90's it was pretty much gone.

For non-Gemran speakers the terms "panzer" pretty much gets tied to WW2. Mk IV was the standard workhorse.

Mk V was the 'panther' and Mk VI was the 'tiger.' But the word "Panzer" pretty much conjures up images of tutonic aggression. not a cyberpunk armored hovercraft.

Speaking of DIY armored vehicles and Mad Max...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/defensorforti...57594152852804/

I like the one with the skulls on the gun shield.

heh, some of those looks like they would work nicely to illustrate a rigger3 creation...

Basic SUVs and pick-up trucks with Vehicle Armor 1-4, a ring mount and pintle mounts. I guess they have a lot of running firefights, since most of those have a very heavily armored rear end and better firing ports to the back than to the sides.

They more accurately have running away firefights. These are not vehicles suited for combat, let alone a sustained fight. These are mobile deathtraps of the highest order.

Read more.

I can understand that. No point in these guys hanging around when ambushed. It just seems to me like trucks like this were designed to be able to fire effectively at cars coming up straight behind them. Maybe that's more for taking out potential carbombers than for any real combat, though.

Yeah, that is definitely intended for dealing with suicide car bombers. I guess it's possible that insurgents have tried running gunbattles with light convoys from technicals and the like, but I've never heard of anything like that, and it would be uncharacteristically incompetent for them.

Oh, I don't know. Maybe the ones that are still alive are a bit brighter, but I know I've linked more than a few images and clips of phenomenally incompetent insurgents here before.

I think they're meant for you to be able to shoot back with a pretty heavy caliber weapon at someone chasing your car. Slightly silly looking or not, obviously there's people over there who feel a need to uparm their trucks this way, and it's not like they can easily get vehicles purpose-built for this...