IVECO Puma Wheeled Armored Fighting Vehicle
Channel: Main Battle Tank
Date: 2023-04-12

Iveco has been designing, developing and building military vehicles since founded in 1975 out of Turin, Italy. When the Italian Army required a new multi-role, multi-wheeled armored vehicle to keep pace on the modern battlefields with its 8x8 wheeled "Centauro" tank-killers (detailed elsewhere on this site), the company set about creating an all-new wheeled design. The first pilot vehicle was readied in 1988 and the stock grew to five before the end of 1990. From there, the Italian Army commissioned for a stock of six "special-mission" vehicles (mortar carriers, ATGM platform, etc...) for additional evaluation and ultimately awarded Iveco the long-sought contract for 540 total Pumas in 1999 - these to come in 240 4x4 wheeled forms and 300 6x6 wheeled forms.