These days, thanks to Mattracks, you can put a continuous-track system on almost anything (paging Ken Block). But the history of cat tracks is long and rife with far headier awesomeness. So what's the coolest vehicle with caterpillar tracks?
A boom in continuous-track vehicles kicked off in the early 20th Century among loggers who needed all-terrain mobility and extreme load capacity. The so-called "cat tracks" got a big consciousness boost during WW1 with the advent of tanks like the Renault FT-17, whose pioneering use during "The War to End All Wars" is linked to Colonel Jean-Baptiste Estienne of the French Army. As Wikipedia points out, the Holt Manufacturing Company became the Caterpillar Tractor Company in 1925, and the company's brand of continuous tracks went on to revolutionize construction vehicles and land warfare. Lesson over. There's a lot more continuous-track madness out there.
(And yes, that's Paul McCartney and John Lennon up in the Austrian Alps during the making of "Help!")
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