I can tell from your comments that you boys are just glancing at these vehicles and offering non-researched personal opinions. And so, with just a little systematic searching I found the following: Although the interior of the RAM Kangaroo was spartan (I'm yet to find information on the interior of the M7 and Churchill variants although the M7 "looks" like it provided better protection than most) it was in fact better suited through protection and mobility than the Universal Carrier and American and German half-tracks. As far as protection goes you just can't look at the above pics and say the troops had less protection. They're in a relaxed state which means they are either in the rear or in well protected areas. Even today soldiers and Marines would choose to ride in whatever comfort possible by opening the hatches on M2 Bradley IFV's and Amtracs, respectively. Furthermore, the Kangaroo was an expedient conversion to solve the overall lack of mobility and armour protection ill-afforded by the half-tracks. And they worked! It seems that throughout their employment losses in personnel dropped. One can only surmise that since Germany was in retreat by the time of the Kangaroo that logistics would not be further strained by production/conversion or more Kangaroos for other units, added to which the Half-tracks were getting the job done anyway. Even though the Kangaroo was used solely by the Canadians (according to what I've found) first at Normandy (1st Canadian Armoured Carrier Regiment and 49th Armoured Personnel Carrier Regiment) and then throughout the rest of the campaign in northwest Europe they can be seen as the forerunners of the modern APC.

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