FDR owed his life to my uncle Al Capone

Really interesting bit of car history

~~~~CAR  TRIVIA  ~~~~

Hours after Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the Secret Service

found themselves in a bind. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was to

give his infamy speech to Congress the next day, and although the

trip from the White House to Capitol Hill was short, agents weren’t

sure how to transport him safely.

At the time, Federal Law prohibited buying any cars that cost more

than $750, so they would have to get clearance from Congress to do

that, and nobody had time for that.

One of the Secret Service members, however, discovered that the

US Treasury had seized the bulletproof car that mobster Al Capone

owned when he was sent to jail in 1931. They cleaned it, made sure

it was running fine and had it ready for the President the day after.

And run properly it did. Capone’s car was a sight to behold.

It had been painted black and green so as to look identical to

Chicago’s police cars at the time. It also had a specially

installed siren and flashing lights hidden behind the grille,

along with a police scanner radio. To top it off, the gangster’s

1928 Cadillac 341A Town Sedan had 3,000 pounds of armor

and inch-thick bulletproof windows. Mechanics are said to

have cleaned and checked each feature of the Caddy well

into the night of December 7th, to make sure that it would

run properly the next day for the Commander in Chief.

The car was sold at an auction price of $341,000 in 2012.