Capone’s bulletproof Caddy up for grabs
The 20’s were a marvellous time in America; I mean they weren’t called ‘roaring’ for nothing. Booming economy, urbanisation, massive leaps in consumerism, the introduction of dance clubs and the synonymous rise of jazz music. Only thing is, there wasn’t any booze to go along with all the prosperity.
This was no good. Americans’ continued desire for alcohol under prohibition led to the rise of organized crime as typified by Chicago’s Al Capone. The Chicago Outfit, which subsequently became known as the ‘Capones’, was dedicated to smuggling and bootlegging liquor, together with other illegal activities such as prostitution.
When you’re involved in such activities you’re bound to receive a lot of attention from not only the coppers, but also rival mobsters. So you’re going to need a solid means of transport. And it didn’t come any more solid than Al Capone’s 1928 Cadillac V-8 Town Sedan – a vehicle that will go under the hammer at auction later this month.
The old Caddy is one of the earliest surviving bulletproof cars. It’s fitted with inch-thick glass and lined with nearly 1,360kgs of armour plating made of asbestos-wrapped steel plate, embedded with pieces of lead; it’s heavy-duty stuff.
You’d imagine speed would be a given in a mobsters getaway car. With a 341 cubic inch L-head V-8 under the hood
you’d assume Mr Capone was good to go. However with just 68kW on tap it’s a good thing his Cadillac was so heavily armoured.
A three-speed manual transmission provided power to the wheels, where you got a beam front axle and full-floating rear axle with semi-elliptic leaf springs and four-wheel mechanical drum brakes. No doubt handling was also rather abysmal then.
However the Caddy gains mobster points with the optional ‘crime’ package, which includes things like a rear window that can drop quickly allowing occupants to shoot pursuers out the back. It’s also got a circular cut-out large enough to accommodate the muzzle of a machine gun for when things get serious. Not to mention a paint job that mimicked that of the local Chicago police vehicles.
RM Auctions suggest this one-of-a-kind will fetch somewhere between $300,000 and $500,000 when it goes under the hammer in Monterey, California. So, if your aspirations of moonlighting as a bootlegging mobster are just a fedora and an armoured Caddy away from fruition, gather up your heavies and start collecting debts ‘cos you’re going to need all the cash you can lay your dirty fingers on.
Miles Downard
First published in Autodealer KZN