Work has begun on the creation of the first Ukrainian armored vehicle INGUAR
The research vehicle will be built at the expense of entrepreneur Mykola Udiansky.
The Kyiv-based design and production company INGUAR has received funding to create the first prototype of its light armored vehicle. It will have MRAP armor class according to NATO standards. The project is funded by a well-known Ukrainian IT entrepreneur Mykola Udiansky.
The vehicle is intended for the Army, Special Forces and reconnaissance troops.
Before the war, a group of Kyiv Polytechnic graduates were engaged in car tuning and building racing cars for various competitions. They also retrofitted armored vehicles and manufactured individual components and parts for them. With the start of the full-scale invasion, they decided to develop a line of light armored vehicles.
“We came up with the idea of creating our own armored vehicle three years ago,” says Artem Yushchuk, the company’s CEO. – “It was then, on October 20, 2020, that the company was founded and gradual work on the project began. After February 24, 2022, the work moved into a new phase, and confidence in its relevance did not require confirmation.”
The name of the car INGUAR literally means “on guard”, i.e. on defense of the Motherland. Artem drew the logo in a notebook during one of his lectures.
Currently, the team employs 15 people, from young engineers to craftsmen with extensive experience in mechanical engineering. When registering the Ingouar trademark, it turned out that the name of our company was similar to the Jaguar automobile company (although in English it actually reads “Jaguar”). The team defends the legitimacy of the brand, as it has a radically different focus.
After the company was founded, the team began to develop the project. We discussed the concept for a long time, looking for differences that would make the car unique and better than the competition. When the features were approved, we started looking for investors. Businessman Mykola Udiansky was one of the first to agree to invest in three stages. The first stage of UAH 20 million will be spent on the development of a prototype. They start assembling it at their own production facilities.
At the second stage, 200 million will be allocated to organize mass production. The third phase of investments will include up to one billion hryvnias.
When the car goes into production, its cost will be UAH 10 million. It is planned to create up to five hundred jobs during mass production.
An interesting feature of the company’s armored vehicles is the absence of a single “donor”. While other armored car manufacturers buy ready-made chassis and install an armored capsule on them, Ingouar claims to have its own chassis and capsule.
“We are different from most of our competitors in that we do not buy a ready-made car and re-equip it, but rather buy individual parts and assemble our own car,” the company says.
This is intended to unify the different versions, as it is planned to create a “family” of four-wheeled (for the transportation of light weapons personnel) and six-wheeled vehicles (for example, for MLRS). The rear of the machine can thus be changed (one or two axles).
