Tumbril Land Systems

Tumbril Land Systems is a human ground vehicle manufacturer based on Saisei in the Centauri system. Founded on Yar in 2536 by Kavya Crosby and Aaron Douze, the company became a fixture of the military after its first vehicle, the DX20, proved itself during the First Tevarin War. Tumbril declared bankruptcy in 2862, and in 2941 the DevCo Group purchased the brand and resurrected its designs for the 30th century.

History

Kavya Crosby and Aaron Douze met as children on Yar, where Crosby's parents operated the landing pad of a University of Saisei research center in the planet's Red Desert. Both developed an interest in the ground vehicles that struggled against Yar's fine sand and harsh weather. They later studied at the University of Saisei, married, and took unfulfilling work in Fujin City before returning to Yar to care for Crosby's aging parents. While clearing out the family hangar after her parents died, the two resolved to build their own vehicle.

Working in their off hours as the landing pad operators, the couple built a prototype from parts salvaged from an old loader cart, which they nicknamed the "tumbril." A University grant let them work on the design full time, and they had a working production model by the end of 2535. They incorporated Tumbril Land Systems on Saisei in 2536 and released their first commercial vehicle, the DX20, later that year. The vehicle initially failed to find a market.

The company's fortunes changed with the outbreak of the First Tevarin War in 2541. Lacking suitable ground vehicles for its first interspecies conflict, the United Planets of Earth (UPE) put existing manufacturers' vehicles through field tests, and the DX20 proved combat ready with only minor modifications. Tumbril won a large military contract, scaled up its operation, and began producing tanks for the war effort. The conflict established Tumbril as a trusted brand and drove civilian sales after the war, turning the company into a leading producer of ground vehicles for both the public and private sectors.

Crosby and Douze ran Tumbril until they were centenarians, retiring a decade after the Second Tevarin War and handing control to the board of directors. The company introduced several enduring designs over the following two centuries, including the Nova, the Timura, and the C-series. Toward the end of the Messer Era, the military prioritized spacecraft over ground vehicles and reduced its contracts with Tumbril, and these contracts shrank further after the regime fell and the new United Empire of Earth (UEE) government redirected resources elsewhere.

To recover the lost government income, the board pushed a series of designs into production without the in-house quality assurance that the company had long maintained, and chose cheaper materials to cut costs. The resulting unpopular vehicles damaged the Tumbril brand. The company replaced several CEOs during the 2850s in an attempt to reverse the decline, and in 2862, despite a few remaining government contracts with planetary surveyors, it declared bankruptcy and shut down.

In 2941, the entrepreneur Terrence Naban partnered his investment firm, the DevCo Group, with outside investors to buy the defunct Tumbril brand. Believing that restoring the established name would reach customers more effectively than launching a new brand, Naban hired designers and engineers to revive Tumbril's designs and updated them for the 30th century. He named himself CEO. The revived company's launch lineup centered on the Cyclone, offered in several variants, with the goal of producing one vehicle well before expanding the range.

Source: StarCitizen.tools. This article includes adapted Star Citizen Wiki content shared under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. The Impound has added formatting, navigation, summaries, related links, and shopping links.