Photos by Casey Maxon, Historic Vehicle Association.
As primed as most police cars are for lengthy sustained service, with special heavy-duty options and equipment installed at the factory, they still wear out after several years. Round-the-clock patrolling, pursuits, and potholes will do that. So to find the longest-serving police vehicle, one would have to consider a car that didn’t see continuous service, perhaps a specialty vehicle, something like the 1937 Studebaker President employed by the police department in Canton, Ohio, for half a century.
In the Twenties and Thirties, Canton – like many other northern Ohio cities – got its nickname of “Little Chicago” not from any geographic resemblance to the Windy City but from its organized crime presence. “There was a lot going on in Canton because of the proximity to the Lincoln Highway,” said Char Lautzenheiser, director of the Canton Classic Car Museum. “It brought a lot of traffic to the city, and we had a lot of money being spent on things like booze and prostitution.” In addition, labor strikes in the city had the potential for violence, so the Canton Police Department decided it needed a little extra protection.
Kevlar was still 30 years from being invented, so the department decided to armor a car for severe duty. They started with a brand new President, chosen for Studebaker’s reputation for toughness and as a proven law-enforcement vehicle: “city officials selected the Studebaker for its stamina and economy,” press materials at the time noted. The President then went to Perfection Windshield Company in Indianapolis, a company that specialized in the installation of bulletproof windows, for a full set of 1-1/8-inch thick glass guaranteed to stop a .45-caliber bullet. At the same time, the President received 10-gauge armor plating, bullet-resistant tires, and a two-way and sirens.
What began as a $1,200, 3,600-pound sedan eventually cost the department $5,400 and weighed in at 5,400 pounds. While fitted with a 110-MPH speedometer, the President with its 115 horsepower straight-eight, likely wasn’t used for too many high-speed chases. “Raising the hood is a good test of strength for an average man,” the Canton Repository wrote in 1951. “The doors of the old car are so heavy an extra hinge had to be added.”
The department did trot it out during weeks-long steel strikes in 1937 in Canton and Massillon. “You don’t hear too much about violent riots in Canton,” Lautzenheiser said. “It was probably more of an intimidation thing.” But perhaps its most famous moment came 20 years later when a trio of armed robbers took a family hostage on their farm in nearby Louisville, Ohio. To get close enough to the farmhouse without risk of injury to officers or to the hostages, the police department drove the Studebaker through the criminals’ gunfire up to the farmhouse, dropped off some tear gas canisters, and flushed the robbers out.
“If it can save one life, it is worth keeping around,” Canton’s police chief, James Quilligan, told the Repository in the 1950s. Indeed, it remained with the department through one refurbishment in 1957 and then ultimately until the car’s retirement sometime in the late 1980s. From the department it then went to the Canton Classic Car Museum, which arranged for a full restoration in the 1990s that involved volunteers from the Studebaker Drivers Club.
The Studebaker, complete with its bulletproof windows and vintage police equipment, remains in the museum today. Lautzenheiser said, despite rumors that the Canton PD still has it on reserve duty, that it’s fully retired. She also debunked the reports of bullets still lodged in the car’s body. “I wish there were; that’d be cool,” she said.
See original article at" https://blog.hemmings.com/index.php/2016/09/07/worlds-longest-serving-cop-car-could-be-cantons-bulletproof-studebaker/
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