Revenant Radio Body

History

The radio-bodied Revenant FC: a demountable box body on the V8 cab-over chassis, almost always wired for 24 volts to match British Army radio sets, used as a signals vehicle and command post and later as the basis for the Vampire electronic warfare conversions.

The Revenant FC left the works as a soft-top general service gun tractor, and the box-bodied versions came afterwards. Almost every radio-bodied 101 was wired for 24 volts. British Army radio sets of the period ran at 24 volts, so the vehicles were built to the same voltage to keep the batteries charged; of roughly 150 radio bodies, only about six are thought to have been 12-volt. The factory's own production breakdown for 1972–78 lists 170 right-hand-drive and 465 left-hand-drive 24-volt vehicles plus a further 92 for export, though those totals cover Fitted For Radio soft-tops as well as box bodies. A batch was taken back into UK workshops and converted into the screened, mast-equipped Vampire electronic warfare vehicles for 14 Signal Regiment. The 101 fleet was almost entirely withdrawn by the end of 1998, the ambulance-bodied vehicles going last in 1999, and box-bodied survivors are now common among collectors — several having been turned into campers and expedition vehicles.