The Saurer Tartaruga (Turtle) was a prototype of an armored personnel carrier from the Adolph

Saurer Adolph Saurer AG was a Swiss manufacturer of embroidery and textile machines, trucks and buses under the Saurer and Berna (beginning in 1929) brand names. Based in Arbon, Switzerland, the firm was active between 1903 and 1982. Their vehicles were ...

AG. The Saurer Tartaruga was built in 1959. Together with the Mowag Pirat it was tested by the

Swiss Army The Swiss Armed Forces (; ; ; ; ) are the military and security force of Switzerland, consisting of land and air service branches. Under the country's militia system, regular soldiers constitute a small part of the military and the rest are ...

. But unexpectedly the Swiss Army decided to buy the American

M113 The M113 is a fully tracked armored personnel carrier (APC) that was developed and produced by the FMC Corporation. The M113 was sent to United States Army Europe in 1961 to replace the mechanized infantry's M59 APCs. The M113 was first used ...

. A prototype is now in the Thun tank museum.

References

* Kurt Sahli: ''Saurer. Geschichte einer Nutzfahrzeugfabrik''. Stämpfli Verlag AG, Bern 1987 * Stefan Keller: ''Die Zeit der Fabriken. Von Arbeitern und einer roten Stadt''.

Rotpunktverlag Rotpunktverlag is a Swiss publishing house, headquartered at ''Hohlstrasse 86A'', 8004 Zürich, Switzerland. Founded in 1976 in Zürich, it is specialized in political history. History and publishing fields The publishing house was founded in 19 ...

, Zürich 2001 * Hans Ulrich Wipf, Mario König, Adrian Knoepfli: Saurer. Vom Ostschweizer Kleinbetrieb zum internationalen Technologiekonzern, hier+jetzt, Verlag für Kultur und Geschichte, Baden 2003, * Markus Mäder: Drei Generationen Saurer. Franz Saurer (1806-1882), Adolph Saurer (1841-1920), Hippolyt Saurer (1878-1936). Schweizer Pioniere der Wirtschaft und Technik, Band 48, herausgegeben vom Verein für wirtschaftshistorische Studien, Meilen 1988 {{Commons category, Saurer Tartaruga Armoured fighting vehicles of Switzerland Abandoned military projects of Switzerland