How the wolf came to the Bundeswehr ...
Military business did not start either. There was not even the price the big obstacle, the buy also Leopard or helicopter. The defenders only always asked why the German Bundeswehr had bought VW Iltis and not the G. We could hardly say that it had come about by accident that VW delivered the small parts, Daimler the medium heavy and MAN the heavy truck. OK, the French army got several thousand Peugeot P4s, a G with engines, electrics and square headlamps from Peugeot. He looked better with the latter than with the round ones. This could be well judged in the Tübingen area, where some rode around when the French were still there as our liberators. By the way, you could also buy cheap Hotchkiss Jeep, 100% like the American from the World War, but with mm screws and nuts.
It started with 1.000 G for Argentina. At that time, they had just Zoff with Great Britain because of the Falklands (narrow) and Islas Malvinas (sp.). One had to pay close attention to the distribution colleagues, who worked on the different regions, to use the appropriate name. The war there came and relatively quickly came a request from the British Ministry of Defense, whether we could deliver spare parts to England.
We had retired 2 generals at the time, looking after potential customers in nato-oliv. One was one whom I would call the Wehrmacht's classic front-line soldier-wiry, barely phrasing Prussian, wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, like seeing from the turret of a tank in the Sahara. The other aristocratic, Huguenot, respecting etiquette, one-armed - I rather imagined him in the General Staff of the Bundeswehr. Who knows, maybe it was the other way around. Flirting and drinking were both good.
The two helped with the acquisition in the countries. But nothing worked for a long time. The G was just too expensive. My second boss in SUV sales defined it like this: the G is a military vehicle only suitable for those who have a huge budget and are sure never to get involved in an armed conflict. When we spoke with the Iraqis in the Iran-Iraq war, they asked what justified the high price on the G. We: "The high quality brings a high reliability and a long life expectancy." The: "Not important. On average, we get a direct hit after 8 weeks. "They then bought used Santana in Spain. At that time, it was a Land Rover built under license in Spain. The breakthrough came when Norway bought G and gradually other natolians.
The neutral Switzerland replaced the old CJ Jeep with G. However, that was called there Puch and should there have petrol engine and automatic. The automatic makes sense, but gasoline? All others take diesel for logistical reasons. Even the Americans meanwhile. In Switzerland, the G was in competition with the Landrover Defender. Landrover claimed to be able to deliver an automatic transmission. We did not believe it, the Swiss Federal Department of Defense. Not least thanks to the power of persuasion and the long arm of Emil Frey, automotive giant and importer of Land Rover. Fortunately, the decision-makers still remembered that they could not introduce the catalytic converter requirement in Switzerland via new emission regulations and then purchase a petrol engine without a catalytic converter for the army. The 230 GE had one, the Land Rover had none. So it was then Puch G.
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