today, as they provided little protection for their crews from enemy fire. First armored cars At the beginning of the 20th century, the first military armored vehicles were manufactured, by adding armor and weapons to existing vehicles. The first armored car was the Simms' Motor War Car, designed by F.R. Simms and built by Vickers, Sons & Maxim of Barrow on a special Coventry-built Daimler chassis with a German-built Daimler motor in 1899. and a single prototype was ordered in April 1899 The prototype was finished in 1902, too late to be used during the Boer War. The vehicle had Vickers armor, 6 mm thick, and was powered by a four-cylinder 3.3-liter 16-hp Cannstatt Daimler engine, giving it a maximum speed of around . The armament, consisting of two Maxim guns, was carried in two turrets with 360° traverse. It had a crew of four. Simms' Motor War Car was presented at the Crystal Palace, London, in April 1902. Another early armored car of the period was the French Charron, Girardot et Voigt 1902, presented at the Salon de l'Automobile et du cycle in Brussels, on 8 March 1902. The vehicle was equipped with a Hotchkiss machine gun, and with 7 mm armour for the gunner. One of the first operational armored cars with four wheel (4x4) drive and partly enclosed rotating turret, was the Austro-Daimler Panzerwagen built by Austro-Daimler in 1904. It was armored with 3–3.5 mm thick curved plates over the body (drive space and engine) and had a 4 mm thick dome-shaped rotating turret that housed one or two machine-guns. It had a four-cylinder 35 hp 4.4 litre engine giving it average cross country performance. Both the driver and co-driver had adjustable seats enabling them to raise them to see out of the roof of the drive compartment as needed. The Italians used armored cars during the Italo-Turkish War. A great variety of armored cars appeared on both sides during World War I and these were used in various ways. World War I Generally, armored cars were used by more or less independent car commanders. However, sometimes they were used in larger units up to squadron size. The cars were primarily armed with light machine guns, but larger units usually employed a few cars with heavier guns. As air power became a factor, armored cars offered a mobile platform for antiaircraft guns. The first effective use of