If you’re obsessed with old-school gangsters and have some serious cash to burn, this could be the holy grail of automobilia. One of Al Capone’s storied Cadillacs is up for sale, but there’s no shot of walking away with it for less than a cool $1,000,000.
The 1928 Cadillac Town Sedan has only 1,111 miles on the odometer and a host of mob-approved hardware. It features one-inch-thick bulletproof glass windows all around, and the side windows can even be cranked up to allow a two-inch gap at the bottom for gunmen to laterally shoot a Thompson submachine gun. The back window opens as well to allow rear-firing—which we get the feeling wasn’t a standard option for every Cadillac customer back in the 20s.
All doors are plated with steel armor and the car was outfitted with a police siren, flashing police lights, and a police radio hidden in the glove box. Making things more annoying for the coppers was the fact that the sedan had been repainted in an identical color to the vehicles driven by local law enforcement, which made it extremely difficult to tell the difference between a car full of gangsters and a car full of people actually coming to help. Capone also had the Caddy’s V8 modified to boost its top speed to 110 miles per hour, which is quite the achievement for a 3.5-ton luxo-barge.
The Cadillac is one of the first armored cars known to have been made, but its ownership history is the most interesting tidbit of all. Capone got the attention of the feds for selling a home and yachts in Florida, but while law enforcement was aware of Capone’s other cars, they missed this Cadillac that was hidden away in a Chicago garage. According to the listing, it was purchased from a sales agent in Chicago who was believed to have been selling the Cadillac for Al Capone. The family that purchased the car intended to use it as a rolling exhibition to make money during the winter, but the plan fell through. After all that, the infamous Caddy lived a quiet life, occupying the Niagara Falls Antique Auto Museum through the 1960s and other museums later on.
So you wanna be a gangster, eh? Here’s your time to shine.
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