In May 1934, Lieutenant-General Hugh Elles was appointed Master-General of the Ordnance and Brigadier Percy Hobart, the Inspector, Royal Tank Corps, asked Vickers to design a tank for infantry co-operation, that could survive all existing anti-tank weapons and be cheap enough for mass production in peacetime. The next year, Vickers had a two-man tank design, with a machine-gun and powered by a civilian Ford V8 engine of . The prototype of October 1936 weighted had a maximum speed of only but carried of armour and was mechanically reliable. The A11, Infantry Tank Mk I, was the first Infantry tank (I tank) and the first practical expression of the decision to split design into I tanks and cruiser tanks, with different functions and tactics, supplied to separate units and formations.