...there were armored cars. It was gradually becoming obvious by the late 1800s that automatic-fire weapons were going to make cavalry obsolete as a scouting force (unless you wanted to know where the enemy was by noting where your cavalry didn't return from). Making cars proof to light rounds seemed like a good way to develop a protected scout, and some of the earliest vehicles came from France and Austria-Hungary.
The son of Gottlieb Daimler, Paul Daimler, developed a very early armored car, the Austro-Daimler Panzerwagen of 1904. While definitely primitive, it had one quite modern feature - a turret capable of 360 degrees of rotation containing the main armament, a Schwarzlose 8mm machinegun (which can be found on Paul Mulcahy's page for Austrian machineguns). It also, unusually for early armored vehicles, had a 4x4 suspension. However, neither Austria nor Germany were quite ready for the idea of motorized scouts yet, and only two of this vehicle were ever built. A variant turret was built, which was open at the rear and contained a pair of machineguns. By the time the Great War broke out, these vehicles were no longer available. One appears in Sergio Leone's "A Fistful of Dynamite," crewed by Germans in Mexico.
Austro-Daimler Panzerwagen
Fire Control: 0
Stabilization: None
Armament: 1 or 2 Schwarzlose 8mm machinegun in turret
Ammo: 500 or 1000x8mm
Fuel Type: G, A
Veh Wt: 2.5 tonnes
Crew: 3
Maint: 2
Night Vision: None (no headlights!)
Tr Mov: 25/10
Com Mov: 12/5
Fuel Cap: 50
Fuel Cons: 10
Config: Veh
Susp: W(2)
HF 1
HS 1
HR 1
TF 1
TS 1
TR 1
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