Why do tanks still look the way they do more than a century later? In this episode, we explore the Renault FT, the small French tank that emerged from the chaos of World War I and established the basic layout that still defines armored vehicles today: tracks on the sides, driver in the front, engine in the rear, and a rotating turret on top.

We trace how a lightweight seven-ton design, created under brutal wartime constraints, solved problems that earlier tanks could not. Along the way, we look at Colonel Estienne’s vision, Louis Renault’s engineering pragmatism, the invention of the fully rotating turret, the production breakthrough that turned the FT into a battlefield swarm weapon, and the surprising myths surrounding its name and legacy.

We also follow the Renault FT far beyond the First World War, through global exports, reverse  ...