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A Brazilian main battle tank once stood toe to toe with the Abrams. For its designers, it meant the high point in their fantastic ascension aswell as their doom and oblivion. The company behind it is long forgotten and only a few prototypes still exist.
In 1958, a group of young engineers led by José Luiz Whitaker Ribeiro founded Engesa - Specialized Engineers S.A. -in São Paulo. The entire firm only had 8 people at first. It produced equipment for the oil industry, initially just for refineries. As a large part of the industry was on shore and equipment had to be sent to faraway locations in the North and Northeast of the country through poor highways and even roadless areas, Engesa sought to fill a logistical gap and drew closer to the vehicle sector. Its first invention of note was Tração Total in 1966, a 4x4 transmission system for Chevrolet, Ford and Dodge trucks and pickups. 6x4 and 6x6 versions soon followed. They offered the highest off-road performance in the national market, and were declared "of interest to National Security" in the following year.
The military government had set its eyes on the young firm. At the time there was both a greater investment in the military and an attempt to nurture national defense companies, with manpower flowing from public to private employment in the sector. This was not just a consequence of the new regime's greater focus on defense but also a reaction to the USA's decision in the 60s to reduce exportation of high-level military technology to Latin America. As the Armed Forces were technologically backwards and greatly dependent on America, which until then had traded generously, they sought European providers and fomented a homegrown arms industry, of which Engesa become one of the big three, along with Avibras and Embraer, large enough to even export defense material. Automobile and aerospace efforts, including all of the big three, were centered in São Paulo, and naval, in Rio de Janeiro. Within the former, the city of São José dos Campos alone housed the Avibras and Embraer HQs, an Engesa plant and the Aeronautics Institute of Technology (ITA).
Engesa now tended to the Army and Navy's fleet of trucks.
It continued to produce innovations: the company was molded and centered on the personality of José Luiz, who approved research projects even at great cost, and invested on R&D more than the norm for national business. A few hundred employees were already on its rolls and it offered a "Y carrier" in which the best technical personnel rose to management-level wages rather than jusy being promoted to management. In 1969 it patented the "boomerang" suspension which allowed each of a truck's two sets of rear wheels to be at a different height, keeping all wheels in contact with the ground even while crossing holes.