Wealthy Russians hunting for Tigr's the Russian Hummers

Dmitry Rogozin is trading in his BMW for a Tigr troop carries known as the "Russian Hummer". The defense chief is purchasing an unarmored version of the GAZ-2330 TIgr according to the newspaper Izvestia.

Rogozin tweeted:

“I’ve been telling that [the] Russian defense industry can do quality non-military products."

The various versions of the Tigr are similar in size to the U.S. Humvee. The Tigr is able to carry more armor and a larger payload, and has a bit further range and maximum speed compared to the Humvee. Up until now, the Tigrs were used only by the military and police. As with the U.S Humvee and Americans, they have become popular among Russians. Wealthy Russians have bought them as surplus military hardware. The leader of the Liberal Democratic Party bought a Tigr back in 2006. Until recently, the Tigrs used diesel engines from the U.S. Civilian buyers can still order the Tigrs with these engines but new models have a Russian built diesel engine. The Tigrs are not cheap. They have a starting price of around $100,000. Surprisingly in January of this year, the Russian Ministry of Defense, decided to use an Italian vehicle instead of the Tigr. As the appended video shows, the Tigr performed in the field in the snow far better than the Italian vehicle, that got stuck almost immediately. The IVECO LVM-M65 was said to have better armament than the Tigr and be much more maneuverable. However, the Ministry of Defense had only asked for Level 3 armament rather than Level 5 as the Italian vehicle has. The makers of the Tigr noted that they could upgrade to Level 5 quite quickly if that were required. Perhaps the choice of the Italian vehicle was the result of kickbacks. The Department of Defense is known for its corruption. Perhaps Rogozin is making the point that things are about to change at the Russian Ministry of Defense.