[David_Hayward (RIP)]

The word actually means "lightning" in German. It was first used on the Opel truck range in 1931 when the name was picked out from a workers' competition in the Russelsheim factory. It was meant to signify "speed", and equipped with the 1930 Model Marquette L-head engine they were not slow! The name was in fact used continuosuly for all civilian and military Opel trucks right up to 1944, and then post-war as well. It seems that the name was used up into the Seventies when Opel sold Bedford Blitz trucks...so there was no concern at the other meanings of the word.

The term "blitzkrieg" meant "lightning war", and the term "blitz" somehow became adopted and adapated in the UK to mean "mass bombing" as "in the Blitz", probably as a contraction of "blitzkrieg" in the sense that aerial warfare by bombing was part of the German attack plan with armoured vehicles. It then seems that CMP trucks became known as "Blitz Buggies" in Australia, and I assume, and hope someone will correct me, because of their wartime order and use in military action.