The Vickers was much smaller than the Medium C at just 7 feet (210 cm) high and weighing only 8.5 short tons (7.7 t).

It was driven by a separately compartmented 86 hp (64 kW) engine through an advanced hydraulic Williams-Jenney transmission, allowing infinitely variable turn cycles.

The advanced transmission proved to be utterly unreliable however and the project was abandoned in 1922 in favour of a generally more conventional design, the Vickers Light Tank Mark I.

Despite being in general more conventional, in one aspect the Medium Mark I looked rather modern: instead of a high track run it possessed a low and flat suspension system with five bogies, each having a pair of small double wheels.

There were two vertical helical springs of unequal length in each of the five bogie casings attached to the hull.

[3] A propeller shaft connected the gearbox to a bevel box at the end of the tank which divided the power to a separate epicyclic gear for each track.

This meant that commander was not distracted with performing either the loader's or gunner's tasks and could fully concentrate on maintaining situational awareness.

[citation needed] Except for the Lago prototype, a predecessor to the Stridsvagn m/42, produced by Landsverk in 1934[5] no other manufacturer constructed a tank with a three-man turret until the German Panzer III.

The practical importance of this feature is signified by the fact that later into the Second World War, most of both sides tank designs either quickly switched to the three-man turret, or were abandoned as obsolete.

The crew of five was only poorly protected by 6.25 mm plating, rivetted to the chassis, barely enough to counter the threat posed by light machine guns.

[clarification needed] The Medium Mark I was the first tank to see "mass" production since the last of the ten Char 2C's was finished in 1921.

They never fired a shot in anger and their performance in a real battle can only be speculated upon but, as the only modern tanks in existence in the decade after the First World War, they provided the British with a unique opportunity to test the many new ideas about mechanised warfare using real operational units.

[6] One Vickers Medium Mark I has survived at the Special Service Battalion Museum, Bloemfontein, South Africa.