JFK's Lincoln ?

Dose anyone know what happened to JFK's lincoln after he was assinated? Was it SOLD? In an museum?

 

It was just on Barrett-Jackson last week.


JOE

 

Hey,

If I remember half way correctly........The car was returned to
the Ford Motor Company from which it was on loan, than retro-
fitted and I beleve returned to service during the Johnson admin-
istration. I can not remember if the vehicle was later destroyed.

Swankey Devils C.C.

 

i think it was in the henry ford museum in detroit for a while. we saw it a few years ago after we went to the detroit autorama...didnt know it got sold...how much did it bring?

 

After the assassination a bulletproof clear roof was added and it later became Nixon's car.

I've seen it many times in the Henry Ford Museum. I'll bet it's still there. Museums rarely sell a piece like that.

 

Last thing I saw it was at the Ford Museum in Dearborn.

 

it was still there last winter i dont think they sold it

 

It was still there as of October...I think it now has a standard roof in place, NOT the bubble top.....


http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r102/ObeesHotRod/untitledad.jpg

 

There were a few clones built for the movies and one was being used for tours here in Dallas, but I havent seen it lately..

 

It's still there. After the assassination, the car was returned to Hess & Eisenhardt for a great deal of work & was out of commission for some time. As mentioned, it was fitted with a standard roof & additional plating, as well as other features.

There were a number of other cars, including a 1950 Lincoln, 1952 & 1953 Chrysler Imperials, 1956 Cadillac, a ?1960 Cadillac, & 1968, 1972, & 1974 Lincolns built for Presidential use (& several others since). If one was sold by B-J, it wasn't the car in which Kennedy was shot, though he may have ridden in it, as he did in several of these cars.

A number of "Presidential" limousines have found their way into private hands. Some of them were backups, & others were used by former Presidents in their retirement years.

 

The following link is a full tech page of the X-100 Lincoln. The name X-100 was given to it by the Secret Service.
http://www.thehenryford.org/research/services/populartopics/JFKLimo/default.asp

When was the car retired?
Although other presidential parade cars were built in 1968 and 1972, it was used occasionally by Presidents Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Carter. The X-100 remained in service until early 1977. The car is now exhibited to the public at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.

 

The only picture I took has the kids in it, but you can still see the car pretty well. This was Summer 2005.

 

I heard it was JFK's hearse for sale.

 

As noted by several already the Henry Ford Museum has the car. Does it seem a little creepy to anyone else that the same car was retrofitted and put back in service? I realize it's the taxpayers money and all that, but couldn't they have started with a fresh Lincoln for the conversion? Maybe it's just me. I don't think I'd want to be the next Prez in that back seat, even with the 'bubble' over it. On a side note, the Ford Museum also used to have the chair Abraham Lincoln was shot in at Ford's Theater 9not sure if they still have that one). Sort of a macabre play on 'Lincoln' and 'Ford' in yet another part of the museum. And Gerald Ford used that car? .... hmmmm.

 

I heard from a reliable source that the car at The Henry Ford Museum on display is NOT the actual car Kennedy was shot in, despite what the Museum says about it. The actual car is still very much bloodstained, still in it's 1963 limo form, and hidden away in Ford's underground stash of cars. She saw it in the mid 90's and has no reason to make such a story up.

The lincoln chair is still there too, I saw it a couple weekends ago.

 

Yeah, I've wondered about that. The car is actually owned( or was at that time) by Ford, not the government...& there was already a substantial amount of money, $200K plus in the car...so perhaps economics ruled.

However, the Warren Commission stored an incredible amount of material in the National Archives; (the complete contents of the operating theater used for the President at Parkland Hospital, INCLUDING ceramic wall tiles, is there, for example). You would have thought that the limousine would have been important enough to be put there.

BTW, the car being auctioned, on 5-7-07, is the hearse used for the trip from Parkland to Air Force One, in Dallas. The other hearse was destroyed, along with the casket used in Dallas/flight, by orders of Bobby Kennedy.

 

ohhhhh the plot thickens with the hidden bloody lincoln.... now that would be an awesome thing to see, some big huge limo conit covered in dust and dry blood. so creepy that its cool. What was the hearse that was used?

 

Especially on a hot day...



JOE

 

If I remember correctly it was a 1963 Pontiac ambulance in Navy livery(medium gray w/black lettering.

 

Yep. The Pontiac was destroyed (used for the trip from Air Force One to Bethesda Naval Hospital); the hearse to be auctioned is a 1964MY Cadillac Miller-Meteor conversion. FWIW.

 

Who built the car?
Ford Motor Company assembled the car at its Lincoln plant in Wixom, Michigan in January 1961. Hess & Eisenhardt of Cincinnati, Ohio was responsible for customizing the car to function as a presidential parade limousine, literally cutting it in half, reinforcing it, extending it 3 ½ feet in length, and making numerous other modifications. Ford Motor Company and Hess & Eisenhardt collaborated on engineering and styling. It debuted at the White House in June 1961. The car remained the property of the Ford Motor Company, which leased it to the Secret Service for the nominal price of $500 per year.

What happened to the car after President Kennedy’s assassination?
The X-100 was impounded for evidence in the weeks following the assassination on November 22, 1963. Soon after plans were made to modify the car in Cincinnati, Ohio and then return it to Washington D.C.


What was “Project D-2” or the “Quick Fix”?
Following the assassination of President Kennedy, a committee was formed (originally comprised of thirty people) of six people representing the Secret Service, Army Materials Research Center, Hess & Eisenhardt and Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company. The White House approved a plan for a revamp of the X-100 around December 12, 1963. Work was completed May 1, 1964 and extensive testing was performed in Cincinnati, Ohio and Dearborn, Michigan before the car was delivered to the White House in June. Costs have been estimated to exceed $500,000 and were shared by Ford Motor Company, some Ford suppliers and the federal government.
Basic elements of the revamp included:

• Complete re-armoring of rear passenger compartment
  
• Addition of permanent non-removable top (‘greenhouse’) to accommodate transparent armor
  
• Replacement of engine with hand-built, high compression unit, providing approximately 17 percent more power
  
• Addition of second air conditioning unit in trunk
  
• Addition of certain electronic communication devices
  
• Reinforcement of some mechanical and structural components, e.g. front wheel spindles and door hinges, to accommodate additional weight
  
• Complete re-trimming of rear compartment, eliminating damage resulting from the assassination
  
• New paint treatment, “regal Presidential Blue Metallic with silver metallic flakes that glitter under bright lights and sunshine” (May 1, 1964 report by Willard C. Hess of Hess & Eisenhardt)

 

The Pontiac was destroyed?!!! Why? it didn't shoot anyone.

Does anyone know, was it a National or a Cotner?

Swankey Devils C.C.

 

Without getting into a whole JFK conspiracy thing....Bobby Kennedy ordered the Pontiac & the first casket (as noted above) destroyed. The reasons have been variously listed as "he was distraught" to "he didn't want the items to become a macabre spectacle" to "it's a conspiracy".

He also had made various other things sealed or inaccessible, at his request, & the Kennedy family has continued to deny access (for the most part). If some of the original autopsy information was allowed to be inspected, a lot of the conspiracy theories would likely be debunked. (Or reinforced, depending on one's viewpoint. )

I have a picture of the Pontiac somewhere....but I couldn't say who did the body conversion. If you want I'll dig it up. Ohhh...that was a bad, bad pun....

 

The Pontiac looked like this ambulance conversion without the lights and siren.

http://www.frontiernet.net/~rang/Images/HD02-1963_Pontiac_Amb.jpg

 

The history channel has documented the "assasination car" and runs the program from time to time. It was a leased car and after several months of investigation it was remanufactured with a new roof and put back into service and as the other posts have correctly stated is was used by several more presidents and redone another time or two before being retired. It is displayed at a museum but only vaguely resembles the car shown in the films of the assasination. There is no car full of blood stored in a basement that no one has seen.

 

Did anyone else notice the '85ish Ford Escort hatchback in the background of the JFK car pic with the kids? What the hell ever happened in an Escort to make it worthy of a museum display?

 

It's been a while since I've looked at it but if I recall it's demonstrating assembly lines...or the "world" concept of obtaining parts from all over...something like that. It's not the Escort, in and of itself. Ugh.

BTW, everybody should try to see the HF museum & Greenfield Village at least once. There is a LOT of neat stuff there, not just auto-related, along with interactive displays & history. Even kids & wives who aren't really into the whole "car thing" enjoy it.

 

Everything related to the JFK assanation is stored in a gigantic black wooden helicopter built by Howard Hughes.
It is stored in an underground hanger in Area 51 in the Nevada Desert that was built under the Triple Secret Magic Mountain.
This area is closely guarded by all the Special Forces Type that were deemed to be to dangerous to be returned to society.

The complete story can be found at: www.getalife.com

 

I worked in the Conservation department of the Henry Ford Museum / Edison Institute from 1979-1981, Yeah a lot of weird stuff on display and in storage, The curator file said that although the Limo was indeed the "Death car" it had been rebuilt and refitted at least twice and very few if any panels were part of the car at the time of the assassination. Then Lincoln "Death chair" was heavily blood stained and encased in a climate controlled vacuum display, some of the wired stuff that very few people
ever see is "Death mask castings" of several presidents and historical figures,.... and in a glass test tube that is in a glass box, Suspended dead center is "the last breath" of Thomas A. Edison, collected by Henry Ford himself as Edison gave up the ghost,......... (I ain't kidding). not to mention a hugh collection of very old children's caskets ( that was just wrong, don't know if there still in storage ).

I don't like the whole conspiracy thing,...... but, J.F.K.'s brain was supposedly lost,.... ?????, I know there are souvenir collectors, But WOAH !

 

Oswald got credit for the chop.