 Therefore already in March 1945 the French industry had been invited to design a more satisfactory vehicle.The same year the "Ateliers de construction d'Issy-les-Moulineaux" (AMX) company presented its "projet 141", a project to build the so-called M 4 prototype, armed with a 90 mm Schneider gun with a 1000 m/s muzzle velocity and comparable in performance to the German 8.8 cm KwK 43.The M 4 closely resembled the German Tiger II in general form, though the turret was to be made of welded sections; but to limit the weight to a desired thirty tonnes the proportions were rather smaller and the armour had a maximum thickness of just thirty millimetres.