War salvage in Europe

[Ed Landstrom]

There were industries founded not only on scrapping or modifying military equipment and selling either vehicles or parts, but on manufacturing new equipment from left over bits.

One example was Ferrucio Lamborghini who got his start by manufacturing tractors out of US surplus parts. The sports cars came later.

A less "sexy" example in Canada were the "army wagons" built from leftover CMP parts. They used to be common here in Ontario and one still occasionally turns up at a farm auction.

It probably wouldn't take much digging to turn up hundreds of companies set up to re-use surplus parts. As the supply of parts dried up, some of them called it a day, while others moved on to other manufacturing.