Deacon

 This is an example of an Army vehicle produced at Park Royal.  To me it looks very fragile and open to easy attack. 

The Matador was a lorry/military chassis designed as a 4x2 or 4x4 arrangement that served a variety of military roles. As a 4x4 it formed the basis of the Deacon anti-tank gun. 

The following information kindly supplied by John Harrington of the AEC Society.

It is a self propelled gun built on an AEC Matador 4x4 chassis.  Called a Deacon, these vehicles were built between December '42 and January '43 with body numbers around 20449 to 20473.

Further information kindly supplied by Ian Ibbotson.

The Deacon was developed during 1942 as a highly mobile anti-tank weapon for use in the North Africa Campaign.  Based on the Matador 4x4 chassis it was fitted with a 6 pounder anti-tank gun on the rear cargo bed and shielded to the front & sides. The cab was also lightly armoured.  Whilst being serviceable as a vehicle, it had a high profile and was difficult to conceal.  It also had poor cross country performance.

It would seem that only 175 were built by AEC at Southall and were issued to divisional anti-tank regiments.  The vehicles were reasonably successful but were only used in the later stages of the Africa Campaign. They were withdrawn afterwards and eventually sold on to Turkey.

Technical Details:

Further information on the Deacon can be found here.