AL CAPONE'S ARMORED CADILLAC USED BY PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT AFTER PEARL HARBOR

On the morning after the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and other U.S. military installations in Hawaii, the Secret Service determined that a bulletproof car was needed immediately to protect President Roosevelt from possible assassins sympathetic to Japan or Germany.

But federal law prohibited purchasing any automobile that cost more than $750. An armored, bulletproof car would certainly cost more than that. Yet there was no time to wait for legislation authorizing such a vehicle, nor the time required to build one, and one was needed instantly.

However, Secret Service Agent Mike Reilly, head of the 70-man White House detail, discovered that after Chicago gangster Al Capone, was convicted of income tax evasion and sent to Alcatraz in August, 1934, the U.S. Treasury Department had seized the crime boss's black and green bulletproof 1928 341A Cadillac Town Sedan. It had a whopping curb weight of 9,000 pounds.

A team of government employees and mechanics worked well into the night of December 7 cleaning and preparing the car, checking everything to make sure it would run and perform as intended to be ready for use by FDR the following day.

On December 8, 1941, when Roosevelt left the White House and went to the Capitol to ask Congress to declare a state of war existed with Japan, he made the trip in Capone's refurbished Cadillac.

Excellent information about the FDR-Capone car can be found in two books available online: Pearl Harbor Amazing Facts! (ISBN 0971056005) and Reilly of The White House (ISBN 978-0781286237).

FDR continued to use the car until the Ford Motor Co. could convert and deliver a 1939 Lincoln V12 armored convertible limousine (quickly dubbed the "Sunshine Special") for Presidential use. They got around the cost restriction by leasing it to the government for $500 annually. This car was used by both FDR and President Harry Truman until 1950. It now reposed in the Ford Museum in Michigan.

Capone's car? It sold at a classic car auction in 2006 for $621,500.

Learn more about this author, Timothy Benford.
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