With Saab's "born from jets" ad campaign attempting to convince buyers that badge-engineered Opels are really just as cool as Mach 2 fighter planes, we find ourselves wishing Kaiser still made cars so they could have a "born from huge oceangoing freighters" campaign. But no matter- Renault's got everyone beat with the great-great-grandpappy of every Renault on the street today: the FT-17 tank. With production starting in late 1917, the FT-17 was so revolutionary (the first tank to have its cannon in a fully rotating turret, among other innovations) that the prospect of thousands of them clanking inexorably across the battlefield was one of the factors that drove the Hun to launch his ill-fated 1918 offensive.
Renault FT-17 [Wikipedia]
Related:
It Was Twenty (One) Years Ago Today: Tank Crushes Cars in San Bernardino [internal]