Late in 1941, the United States Secret Service felt urgent pressure to increase its protective services for the president. Citing the inherent dangers of the war, Secret Service operatives took a vehicle from the U.S. Treasury Department’s seized inventory. The car would be the first armored vehicle in a presidential motorcade, and it has one of the most unusual histories I’ve ever heard.

According to the Secret Service’s published history on presidential motorcades, Franklin D. Roosevelt would ride in a Cadillac Town Car seized from Al Capone. The U.S. Treasury impounded the car from the gangster years before, in 1932. At that time, Capone faced tax evasion charges.

According to statements, specifically from FDR’s assigned agent, Michael F. Reilly, the government’s budget capped automobile purchases at $750. Reilly wrote a memoir of his days serving the president and explained why he asked the U.S. Treasury for the Capone Cadillac. 

“You couldn’t get any autos that could repel an air rifle pellet for $750,” he wrote. As such, in December 1941, Reilly decided to pull some strings and at least get the president into something a bit safer than standard production cars.

The vehicle featured a removable top—less preferable than the more common closed-topped sedans of the thirties and forties—and boasted a thick windshield and equally thickened window glass. However, the body of the vehicle remained factory-grade. The windows didn’t roll down.

It seems the Cadillac had other official capacities before FDR hopped in. “I had learned about nonworking windows when the King of England came within a hairsbreadth of passing out from the heat during his 1939 visit,” Reilly wrote.

In his memoir, Reilly expressed his overall disapproval of the vehicle. “I wasn’t very pleased with the Capone wagon. I wanted a closed car, lined with steel and with bulletproof windows that worked.”

Reilly ended up sharing his resentments with his network. “I explained that to some friends in Detroit, and an automobile company (Ford) was nice enough to build an armored job for us.” However, Reilly said that the Secret Service was unable to take the custom car from Ford. “Then Mr. Government pointed out that we couldn’t accept gifts.”

“It was finally arranged to the satisfaction of one and all when the auto people rented us the vehicle for a little under ten dollars a week,” Reilly recalls.

The Secret Service’s history page says that FDR used the Capone Caddy only until the president’s fleet became steel-plated in early 1942. After that, armored Cadillac, Ford, and Lincoln models remained regular presidential nameplates.

World War II was certainly an unprecedented era in U.S. history, and its motorized narrative contains thousands of interesting tidbits. For instance, dozens of WWII-era military planes rest at the bottom of Lake Michigan. The body of water was used to train hundreds of young, totally inexperienced pilots.

The seized Capone Cadillac that served in the early days of armored presidential motorcades is another fascinating tidbit, no doubt.