Panhard was originally Panhard-Levassor, and was established as a car manufacturing concern by René Panhard and Émile Levassor in 1887.
Panhard is a French manufacturer of light tactical and military vehicles. Its current incarnation, now owned by Renault Trucks Defense, was formed by the acquisition of Panhard by Auverland in 2005. Panhard had been under Citroën ownership, then PSA (Peugeot société anonyme) after the 1974 takeover of Citroën by Peugeot, for 40 years. The combined company now uses the Panhard name; this was decided based on studies indicating that the Panhard name had better brand recognition worldwide than the Auverland name. Panhard once built innovative civilian cars but ceased production of those in 1968. Many of its military products however end up on the civilian market via third sources and as military/government surplus vehicles. Panhard also built railbuses between the wars.
The last Panhard passenger car was built in 1967. After assembling 2CV panel trucks for Citroën in order to utilize capacity in face of falling sales, and raising operating cash by selling ownership progressively to Citroën, respectively to its then mother company Michelin (full control as of 1965), in fall of 1967 the civilian branch was absorbed by Citroën, and the marque was retired. Since 1968 Panhard has only made armored vehicles.[1]