Reporters driving Armored Vehicles

For some reason, the last month has seen several articles in the media about reporters driving tanks and armored vehicles.  Two of these pieces have appeared in Business Insider.  The first of which is an article from March 23 by Lianna Brinded called “I went to Lithuania to drive a tank and it was one of the coolest things ever.”  Of course, the use of the term “tank” in the headline is misleading.  As usual the media call any vehicle with tracks a tank regardless of what it actually is.  In this case, the tank in question was actually a FV432 APC.

A few days later Business Insider ran another story about a reporter goofing around with tanks called “We visited a farm in England that lets you crush cars with military tanks.”

This article focuses on Tanks-A-Lot, a farm in Helmdon, Northamptonshire which offers people the chance to ride in an armored vehicle for a fee.  As usual, every vehicle pictured in the article is called a tank.  As with the other article, the vehicle the reporter actually gets to drive is an FV432 APC.

And finally, on April 10 another story about Tanks-A-Lot appeared in the travel section of the Telegraph.  And once again, the reporter gets to drive a FV432.  Credit must be given to this particular reporter in that he correctly identifies the vehicle as an APC rather than calling it a tank.  This is followed by a drive in a CET, which according to the article, promptly breaks down.