BIG TIME CRIMINAL BORROWS CAR STOLEN FROM SMALL TIMER

Hours after Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the Secret Service found themselves in a bind. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was to give his Day of Infamy speech to Congress on Tuesday, and although the trip from the White House to Capitol Hill was short, agents were not 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.

Al Capone’s 1928 Cadillac 341a Town Sedan , Now the President’s Limo, December 1941. 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 gangsters 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.