Two Men and a Car: Franklin Roosevelt, Al Capone, and a Cadillac V-8

It is December 8, 1941, the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt leads a nation in crisis.

He must make a speech to a joint session of Congress that will build support for America’s entry to World War II, but to do that he needs an armored vehicle in which to make the short trip from the White House to the Capitol Building. According to legend, the car Roosevelt rode in that day, borrowed from the FBI’s impound lot, was an armored Cadillac V-...