Schepler with a freshly armoured Land Rover. - All dpa pix

FRANKFURT: An armoured vehicle manufacturer says there's a limit to the heavy armour-cladding a car with a treasured load requires.

"Experience has shown that a quick escape is the most important thing. A car that can continue travelling 500 metres (after an attack) can be a lifesaver," said Henrik Schepler, pointing out that vehicles with lighter armour were plainly nimbler.

A trained coachbuilder, Schepler is managing director of Carl Friederichs, a Frankfurt, Germany-based company that once built horse-drawn carriages but now specializes in armoured money transporters and other vehicles that can take a punch and keep going.

The firm often guts standard production cars and beefs them up with bulletproof glass as thick as 8 centimetres and steel plating up to 1.2 centimetres. Since armoured vehicles weigh several tons, a new chassis is sometimes built.



Super-tough tyres that can keep on rolling flat, after being shot through, are sometimes fitted - at a cost of 1,500 euros apiece.

Given the precarious state of security in many world regions, business is booming.

"We live from exports," said Schepler, noting that about 80 per cent of the company's customers were governments or government institutions.

Schepler says an armoured car is a tactical asset. That's why customers are strongly advised to break up any armoured vehicles withdrawn from service, not leave them parked somewhere where they could fall into the wrong hands.

Judging by a peek into one of the company's workshops, scrapping a retired armour-clad can hardly be a simple matter.

In the garage is a now-battered vehicle back from a weapons proofhouse. It had been subjected to 498 shots. Several hand grenades had exploded on the roof as well as beside and under the vehicle, and a 15-kilogram bomb had been detonated four metres away from it.

 

While the chassis was banged up, the steel armour and bulletproof windows were still in good shape.

The work by the Carl Friederichs firm is all done by hand.

Schepler said net prices varied greatly, starting from about 80,000 euros (RM375,000) for an armoured Land Rover Defender - "our bread-and-butter vehicle."

Carl Friederichs has production sites or service centres in the Netherlands and the new King Abdullah Economic City north of Jeddah in Saudi Arabia.



"The Saudi market is gigantic," Schepler remarked.

He said his many travels had taken him, among other places, to the presidential palace in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, where he met former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. His company has also done work for Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

Carl Friederichs supplies armoured escort vehicles and money transporters for Nigeria's state bank, as well as trucks used as mobile workshops at oilfields and large construction projects in rough terrain on the Arabian peninsula and in Africa.

Deliveries to Africa also include robust ambulances and mobile banks. The latter are trucks equipped with ATMs and counters and armoured cabs for the driver and bank tellers who visit remote small towns.

The Dutch government is the biggest buyer of armoured vehicles and guard containers.

Cars from Carl Friederichs that were delivered to the Netherlands ferried members of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) around embattled eastern Ukraine when they were investigating the 2014 downing of a Malaysian airliner en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.

"We benefit from the tense security situation," Schepler said.

Juergen Pieper, an analyst with the Frankfurt-based private bank Metzler, puts the worldwide market for armoured vehicles at several billion dollars.

"Security needs are growing, income distribution is becoming more unequal," he said, adding that terrorism, kidnappings and crime rates in general had also risen.

Schepler warned against feeling secure encased in armour.

"Total safety doesn't exist," he said, pointing out that weapons and ammunition were continually being improved to achieve better penetrating power.

Keywords