Hotspur Sandringham 139″ APC.

The Hotspur Sandringham APC was a private venture by Hotspur Armoured Products Limited, derived from the Sandringham 6 — the civilian 6×6 conversion of the Stage One V8 engineered by the associated Sandringham Motor Company (SMC Engineering, Bristol) — whose two-ton payload and permanent six-wheel drive suited an armoured body well. The basic APC seated a crew of two in the cab and eight fully equipped troops on longitudinal benches in the rear compartment, with a fan ventilation system, interior lights and an explosion-proof 18-gallon long-range fuel tank as standard, on either the 125-inch (S6) or 139-inch (S6E) wheelbase.

The underlying Sandringham 6 was shown at the 1980 British Army Equipment Exhibition and entered production in 1982; the armoured derivatives were offered through the early-to-mid 1980s. The concept found its successor in the Hotspur Hussar, an armoured 6×6 on a stretched Land Rover One Ten chassis first shown at the 1984 BAEE, which went on to sell around 124 examples to Egypt, Sri Lanka, Bahrain and one other customer under Hotspur Armoured Products, later a division of Penman Engineering.

Production of the Stage One-based Sandringham APC itself was tiny — the entire Sandringham 6 run across all bodies is believed to number only around a dozen vehicles — and no operator of the Series III-based APC is reliably documented.