It bears mention that this point that the combat tank was still essentially regarded and utilized as an "armored fighting vehicle" (AFV) intended to support infantry actions and break through the defenses that created the stagnate fronts of trench warfare across Europe. By definitive, this made the vehicles more akin to "infantry support tanks" - they were slow due and could barely keep pace with walking troops and were lost to cavalry advances altogether. The availability of suitable powerplants also played a key role in their limited design approach - many stemming from existing heavy industry engines. Track systems were usually born of existing farm tractor designs so few components of World War 1 tanks were actually born as "all-new" developments. The end-products, therefore, were slow, ponderous and generally ineffective direct combat systems - which is what the limited FIAT 2000 proved to be.
The FIAT endeavor was honorable though considered by Italian authorities as far too different from what was actually needed in mountain warfare. It was dimensionally too large to cross through the narrow mountain passes being presented and much too heavy to clear Italian countryside bridges. The uneven terrain of the northern region also negated the FIAT 2000 from ever being used in combat during The Great War - this resulted in only two of the type ever being produced throughout 1918 and neither going on to see combat of any kind. World War 1 ended in an armistice during November of that year.
Before the end of the war, however, the Italians received a working example of another French tank design - the Renault FT-17 - a 6-ton light tank with a two-man crew and traversing turret housing the primary armament. It would be this particular vehicle development that would influence Italian tank design into the next decade and beyond for its qualities were more in line with the developing Italian tank doctrine - a small, light-class mobile system. The type was utilized extensively in the post-war years by other major powers including the Americans and Russians and lay the foundation for many designs to follow (the American Expeditionary Force operated the FT-17 in battle as the "M1917" during World War 1). Ironically, the lozenge-shaped British tank approach was ultimately abandoned in favor of turret-minded mobile systems instead - light tanks beginning to take center stage in the years leading up to World War 2. It seems that the French, despite their early forgettable attempts at a fighting tank, had revolutionized warfare once again.
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