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1934
Outgunned and outrun: the robbery left the South Bend Police Department with a plain lesson, which the South Bend Tribune's retrospective feature states in its own terms: at the Merchants National the department had been outgunned and outrun. Its answer was built by the city's own industry. The Studebaker Company custom-designed a 1934 President sedan for the department — the car the city called the Dillinger Car — with a powerful motor, a gun porthole in the windshield, and armored baffles to shield the radiator and the tires.
Its career: the car was never truly used in a crook pursuit, and within a few years the department had junked it. The pattern it set traveled further than the car did: Canton, Ohio, converted a 1937 Studebaker President on the same lines, with armor plate around the body and bulletproof glass an inch and an eighth thick, the additions adding nearly a ton and bringing the price to some $5,400 for a car that retailed at about $1,200. South Bend's entry in the gang era's ledger is usually the robbery; its second entry is this — the hometown factory's armored answer, built for a police force that had watched a patrolman die at Michigan and Wayne.
Sources:
- South Bend Tribune, "A Look Back" retrospective feature — the custom-designed 1934 Studebaker President police car: gun porthole in the windshield, armored baffles for radiator and tires, never truly used for pursuit, junked within a few years; the Canton, Ohio conversion of 1937 and its cost (read in a mirrored copy of the feature).