Initially, Christie promised to sell his M1928 tank design to the Polish government. In 1929, Captain Marian Rucinski of the Polish Military Institute of Engineering Research (WIBI) was sent to the US, and soon learned of the M1928 tank being constructed by Christie's company, the "US Wheel Track Layer Corporation" in Linden, New Jersey. Rucinski also learned of a design for an improved tank (later known as the Christie M1931) that had recently gone to blueprint. Rucinski's opinion was so enthusiastic that on February 16, 1930 a special acquisition commission was dispatched to the US, headed by the Chief of the Engineering Department, Colonel Tadeusz Kossakowski. The commission signed a contract with Christie in March for construction and delivery of a single M1928 tank, and paid a pre-payment to him. Christie later reversed course and failed to deliver on his contract obligations, and faced with potential litigation, eventually returned the payment made by the Polish government, which never obtained the tank they had ordered.