They don’t even make American criminals like they used to. Can you imagine Bernie Madoff writing a letter to Bob Lutz about a Cadillac’s Palm Beach cruising powers?
Write a letter to Henry Ford is just what Clyde Barrow did a month before he was gunned down by J. Edgar Hoover’s G-Men. Or not, depending on whom you believe.
In any case, it’s recently been republished on the excellent Letters of Note blog. And you’ve just got to love phrasing like this:
For sustained speed and freedom from trouble the Ford has got ever other car skinned and even if my business hasen’t been strickly legal it don’t hurt enything to tell you what a fine car you got in the V8.
Times have changed since the early Thirties. A few years ago, I had a chat with a gentleman who suggested that the best vehicle by far for escaping from police cruisers is the big Lexus LS sedan. Why? Because the suspension allows you to use the worst roads that come your way and still maintain excellent handling.
But that’s another story. Meanwhile, dig the handguns as ornaments on the grille. Whatever Mr. Barrow lacked in legal ways of doing business he did not lack in style.