What Really Happened to History's Most Infamous Death Cars

These are the cars that carried famous people to their deaths. And what really happened to every one of them afterwards?

December 20th, 1973. A cold, gray morning in Madrid. A black Dodge rolls slowly down a narrow street called [music] Claio Co. In the back seat sits Luis Carrero Blanco, the prime minister of Spain, the man expected to keep Franco's regime going after him.

December 20th, 1973. A cold, gray morning in Madrid. A black Dodge rolls slowly down a narrow street called Claio Co. In the back seat sits Luis Carrero Blanco, the prime minister of Spain, the man expected to keep Franco's regime going after him.

That routine is the problem. For weeks, three men have been digging a tunnel under the road from a basement flat.

He's just come from mass, the same church he visits every single morning at the same time along the same street.

rips open a crater about 15 m long and several meters deep. But the strange part is where the car goes. The heavy black sedan is thrown more than 20 m into the air, clean over the roof of a

That routine is the problem. For weeks, three men have been digging a tunnel under the road from a basement flat.

the Basque Separatists. The three men were never put on trial. Their leader was killed 5 years and one day later in France by a bomb hidden under his own [music] car. But the Dodge wasn't scrapped. It wasn't buried in an

They told the landlord they were student sculptors, which explained the noise. Under the asphalt now sit about 80 kg of explosives, and a wire runs back up to the street. The Dodge passes over the spot. The wire is connected. The blast rips open a crater about 15 m long and several meters deep. But the strange part is where the car goes. The heavy black sedan is thrown more than 20 m into the air, clean over the roof of a five-story Jesuit residence, and comes down on a second floor terrace on the far side of the building. Carrero Blanco dies in hospital. His driver, Jose Luis Perez Moa, and his bodyguard, Juan Antonio Bueno Fernandez, are killed as well. The group behind it was ETA, the Basque Separatists. The three men were never put on trial. Their leader was killed 5 years and one day later in France by a bomb hidden under his own car. But the Dodge wasn't scrapped. It wasn't buried in an archive. The twisted shell was kept by the Spanish army and it still belongs to the army museum. Today it stands in an army vehicle collection just outside Madrid. A heap of black iron that somehow still looks like a car. You can go and see it, but only on two weekday mornings a week and only if you book ahead with the army. That Dodge became an exhibit. The next death car became somebody's family car.

go and see it, but only on two weekday mornings a week and only if you book ahead with the army. That Dodge became an exhibit. The next [music] death car became somebody's family car. March 9th, 1997, Los Angeles. It's a little before 1 in

March 9th, 1997, Los Angeles. It's a little before 1 in the morning, and the Vibe magazine party at the Peterson Automotive Museum has just been shut down by the fire department. Christopher Wallace, the notorious B.I.G., climbs into the front passenger seat of a green 1997 GMC Suburban. His new album is 16 days from release. The street is full of people, car horns, and music. The Suburban stops at a red light on Wilshire Boulevard about 50 yards from the museum. A dark Chevrolet Impala pulls up alongside. A man in a blue suit leans out and fires six shots into the passenger door. Biggie is hit four times. He's pronounced dead at the hospital less than an hour later. He was 24. Police go over the Suburban for fingerprints, but they don't keep the truck. They keep the front passenger door, the one with the bullet holes, as evidence. That original door is believed to be in police storage to this day. The rest of the Suburban gets a replacement door and goes back on the market. In October 1997, a woman buys it at a public auction for her family of six. It becomes their family car. For 8 years, they have no idea.

release. The street is full of people, car horns, and music. The Suburban stops at a red light on Wilshire Boulevard about 50 yards from the museum. A dark Chevrolet Impala pulls up alongside. A man in a blue suit leans out and fires

Then in 2005, police track them down. The Suburban might be needed as evidence in a lawsuit over Biggie's death. In 2017, the family puts it up for sale. The paint has been repaired, but there's still a bullet hole in the passenger seat belt. The odometer shows about 114,000 miles. The asking price is $1.5 million. A year later, it's down to around $750,000. In 2021, a single hubcap from the truck is offered on its own for $150,000. Stuck to it is a torn promotional sticker for his album with the date March 25th, 1997 printed on it. No confirmed sale of the Suburban has ever been made public, and the murder is still officially unsolved. Nobody has ever been charged. The man who fired those shots drove away.

front passenger door, the one with the bullet holes, as evidence. That original door is believed to be in police storage to this day. The rest of the Suburban gets a replacement door and goes back on the market. In October 1997, a woman

In Mexico 74 years earlier, the man who was killed was driving his own car. July 20th, 1923. Hidalgo del Parral, Mexico. It's a hot morning, and Pancho Villa, the most famous general of the Mexican Revolution, is behind the wheel of his Dodge brothers' car, heading home from town. He's retired now, a rancher, and he likes to drive himself. Six men ride with him. As the Dodge passes a house on a quiet street, rifles open up from the windows. The gunmen fire volley after volley. Villa is killed at the wheel and the car rolls to a stop. Four of his companions die, too. His bodyguard, Ramon Contreras, is badly hit, but still manages to shoot dead one of the attackers before he goes down. He survives and loses his arm. Within hours, postcards of the bullet-riddled car are on sale in the town.

Then in 2005, police track them down. The Suburban might be needed as evidence in a lawsuit over Biggiey's death. In 2017, the family puts it up for sale.

Only one of the gunmen goes to prison. He claimed the fatal shot himself. He's out within months. But the car has an even stranger afterlife. A man named Pablo Morgan ends up with the Dodge and he hides it. For 12 years, he keeps it out of sight, waiting for the right moment to sell it back to Villa's widow, Luz.

[music] The asking price is $1.5 million. A year later, it's down to around $750,000.

In 1935, the governor of Chihuahua steps in. The car is recovered and handed over to her. She parks it at her own home, a big house called Quinta Luz. She keeps it for almost half a century. In 1981, she gives the house to the Mexican army. And that July, she dies there. A year later, it opens as a museum of the revolution. The car is still there in the courtyard, holes and all. As for Villa himself, he didn't stay put either. In 1926, someone broke into his tomb and took his head. It has never been found. Villa's widow kept her car as a memorial. The next family didn't keep their car as a shrine. They just kept driving it.

Stuck to it is a torn promotional sticker for his album with the date March 25th, 1997 printed on it. No confirmed sale of the Suburban has ever been made public, [music] and the murder is still officially unsolved. Nobody has

December 30th, 1952, Montgomery, Alabama. Hank Williams, the biggest star in country music, has a New Year's Day show booked in Canton, Ohio. The weather is turning bad, so a college freshman named Charles Carr is hired to drive him there. The car is Hank's pride and joy, a 1952 Cadillac convertible in a pale shade the factory called Olympic Blue. He bought it used that summer with a bank loan of $3,818 and he's still paying it off at $212.12 a month. In Knoxville, they try to catch a plane, but snow forces the flight back. So, they keep driving through the night north into Virginia. Hank is lying in the back seat, sick and drinking. Somewhere in West Virginia near a town called Oak Hill, Carr realizes Hank isn't moving. Hank Williams is dead. He was 29. Inside the car, there are empty beer cans and a few lines of a song he never finished. When Carr calls Hank's mother with the news, one of the first things she tells him is this. Don't let anything happen to the car. Three weeks later, the title to the Cadillac is mailed out, addressed to Hank. The family didn't hide the car. Hank's son, Hank Williams Jr., drove it as a teenager all the way to high school. In 1985, it was restored and put on display in Nashville. And in 1999, it came home to Montgomery as the centerpiece of the Hank Williams Museum. Visitors can walk right up to it, but the back seat is off limits. The museum was founded by a man named Cecil Jackson. As a teenager, one week before Hank's last ride, he rotated the tires on that same Cadillac. Charles Carr went on to work in real estate. He never tried to make money from the story, and he died in 2013. Hank's mother got her wish. Nothing happened to the car. More than 70 years later, it still shines. That Cadillac has one owner and one story. The next car comes in three versions, and nobody can agree which one is real.

Hidalgo de Paral, Mexico. It's a hot morning, and Panchchova, the most famous general of the Mexican Revolution, is behind the wheel of his Dodge brother's car, heading home from town. He's retired now, a rancher, and he likes to

May 27th, 1942, Prague. A Mercedes 320 convertible with its roof down and the number plate SS3 takes a hairpin bend on its way to Prague Castle. In the passenger seat sits Reinhard Heydrich, one of the chief architects of the Holocaust and the Nazi ruler of occupied Bohemia. He's so sure of himself that he travels without armed guards. Two Czechoslovak parachutists trained in Britain are waiting on the bend. The first one steps out and pulls the trigger on his submachine gun. It jams. The second throws a bomb. It bursts beside the right rear wheel and shrapnel rips through the side of the car. Heydrich sta

The gunmen fire volley after volley. Beia is killed at the wheel and the car rolls to a stop. Four of his companions die, too. His bodyguard, Rammon Contras, is badly hit, but still manages to shoot dead one of the attackers before he goes

down. He survives and loses his arm. Within hours, postcards of the bullet riddled car are on sale in the town.

Only one of the gunmen goes to prison. He claimed the fatal shot himself. He's out within months. But the car has an even stranger afterlife. A man named Pablo Morgia ends up with the dodge and he hides it. For 12 years, he keeps it

out of sight, waiting for the right moment to sell it back to Via's widow, Loral.

In 1935, the governor of Chihuahua steps in. The car is recovered and handed over to her. She parks it at her own home, a big house called Kintaloo. She keeps it for almost half a century. In 1981, she

gives the house to the Mexican army. And that July, she dies there. A year later, it opens as a museum of the revolution.

The car is still there in the courtyard, holes and all. As for Via himself, he didn't stay put either. In 1926, someone broke into his tomb and took his head. It has never been found. Via's widow kept her car as a memorial. The

next family didn't keep their car as a shrine. They just kept driving it. December 30th, 1952, Montgomery, Alabama. Hank Williams, the biggest star in country music, has a New Year's Day show booked in Canton, Ohio.

The weather is turning bad, so a college freshman named Charles Carr is hired to drive him there. The car is Hank's pride and joy, a 1952 Cadillac convertible in a pale shade the factory called Olympic Blue. He bought it used that summer with

a bank loan of $3,81818 and he's still paying it off at $212.12 a month. In Knoxville, they try to catch a plane, but Snow forces the flight back. So, they keep driving through the night north into Virginia. Hank is lying

in the back seat, sick and drinking. Somewhere in West Virginia near a town called Oak Hill, Carr realizes Hank isn't moving. Hank Williams is dead. He was 29. Inside the car, there are empty beer cans and a few lines of a song he

never finished. When Carr calls Hank's mother with the news, one of the first things she tells him is this. Don't let anything happen to the car. 3 weeks later, the title to the Cadillac is mailed out, addressed to Hank. The

family didn't hide the car. Hank's son, Hank Williams Jr., drove it as a teenager all the way to high school. In 1985, it was restored and put on display in Nashville. And in 1999, it came home to Montgomery as the centerpiece of the

Hank Williams Museum. Visitors can walk right up to it, but the back seat is off limits. The museum was founded by a man named Cecil Jackson. As a teenager, one week before Hank's last ride, he rotated the tires on that same Cadillac. Charles

car went on to work in real estate. He never tried to make money from the story, and he died in 2013. Hank's mother got her wish. Nothing happened to the car. More than 70 years later, it still shines. That Cadillac has one

owner and one story. The next car comes in three versions, and nobody can agree which one is real.

May 27th, 1942, Prague. A Mercedes 320 convertible with its roof down and the number plate SS3 takes a hairpin bend on its way to Prague Castle. In the passenger seat sits Reinhardt Hydrickch, one of the chief architects of the Holocaust and

the Nazi ruler of occupied Bohemia. He's so sure of himself that he travels without armed guards. Two Czechoslovak parachutists trained in Britain are waiting on the bend. The first one steps out and pulls the trigger on his submachine gun. It jams. The second

throws a bomb. It bursts beside the right rear wheel and shrapnel rips through the side of the car. Hydrickch staggers out, gun in hand. His injuries don't look fatal, but the blast has driven horsehair from the seed stuffing

deep into his body. Infection sets in and on June 4th, he dies. The revenge is horrific. An entire Czech village is wiped off the map. The two parachutists are betrayed and on June 18th, they die in a Prague church surrounded by

hundreds of German troops. And the car, the Germans repair it. After the war, it's used by the Czechoslovak secret police, then stored in army depots. In 1960, it's sold to a soldier, and by the 1970s, it's rotting in a barn in the

Czech countryside. In 2007, a businessman named Vladimir Machek buys a wrecked Mercedes said to be that same car. He spends 18 years restoring it. A historian compares it to the photos German police took in 1942 and counts almost 50 points of damage that match.

In May 2025, it's unveiled to the public with a ceremony at Hydrick's old country estate. Then the doubts begin. A rival collector says the chassis number belongs to an earlier model, a 1936 Mercedes 290, and calls the car a near

worthless patchwork. In July 2025, eight forensic experts from the Czech police examine it. Their conclusion is blunt.

The original seat padding shows no shrapnel damage and no bomb fragments are found. They say this car was never at the attack. The owner still insists it was. And in Denmark, another man has offered a third Mercedes as the real

thing with a price tag of up to 3.5 [music] million Danish croner. It didn't sell.

Only 43 cars like it were ever built. The car's production number survives, but the factory files it should be checked against went up in flames, so there's nothing left to compare it with.

Hydrick's car has too many claimants. The next one has none at all because nobody outside the team has seen it since the investigation.

February 18th, [music] 2001. The Daytona 500 final lap. Dale Nhard, the intimidator, seventime champion, is running third in his black number three Chevrolet Monte Carlo. Out front are Michael Walrip and Dale Nhard Jr., his own son. Both are driving cars that Dale

owns. And Dale is doing something he's not famous for. He's protecting them, blocking the pack behind. In turn four, his left rear is touched by Sterling Marlin's car. The black Chevrolet slides down the banking, shoots back up across

the track, and hits the outside wall almost headon at around 160 mph. It doesn't look that bad. The car is mostly intact, but Ken Shrader, whose car is tangled up with Dalees, climbs out, looks inside, and frantically waves

for the medics. Walrip wins. Junior finishes second. Their car owner is dead from a fracture at the base of the skull. The fallout is enormous. Sterling Marlin gets death threats until Dale Jr.

asks fans to stop. A left lap belt is found to have separated and the founder of the company that made it quits and sues NASCAR. By October, a head and neck restraint is mandatory for every driver.

Within a few years, soft, energyabsorbing walls are lining every oval in the Cup Series. No driver has been killed in a Cup Series race since.

The team changes the number from 3 to 29 and hands the ride to a rookie, Kevin Harvick. 3 weeks later, he wins in Atlanta. [music] And the black number three, after the investigation, it simply disappears. Richard Childress Racing has never shown it and never said

where it is. Fans have suggested it was crushed and buried, locked away in a sealed room, sunk in the lake inside the track, even melted into the base of his statue. None of it has ever been confirmed. It was probably the most

photographed car in America, and there hasn't been a single public photo of it in 25 years. That car was hidden in one piece. The next one was taken apart and sold off by the square inch. November 26th 1963

4 days after Dallas, the presidential limousine sits in the White House garage, and two men are leaning into its back seat with blades. One is F. Von Ferguson, a technician who looked after the car for Ford. The other is the White

House upholsterer. They cut away the bloodstained leather where President Kennedy sat. Light blue from the middle of the seat, dark blue from the border.

Nobody stops them, and Ferguson takes some of the pieces home. That same day, workers from a glass company arrive to deal with the windshield. It's cracked with a mark from a bullet fragment, and it's an important piece of evidence. But

the glazers don't unbolt it gently. They kick it out of the frame with their feet. The windshield survives anyway. It ends up at the National Archives, where it's still kept today. The leather has had a busier life. In 2014, swatches

from Ferguson's collection sell at auction for $23,275. And in November 2023, a pair of small pieces together about the size of a postcard are expected to fetch around $6,000. [music] They sell for $46,865.

Behind the president that day was another car, the Secret Service follow-up car, a 1956 Cadillac nicknamed the Queen Mary. Agents rode on its running boards. A rifle was kept inside.

Later, it passed between private collectors, and where it sits now is still argued over, and the driver of the limousine, Agent William Greer, retired in 1966. He later said he should have swerved. He died in 1985.

The leather was cut out in a garage and quietly carried home. The next car was cut up in a scrapyard and nobody did that by accident. October 9th, 1934.

Marseilles. King Alexander of Yugoslavia has just stepped off a warship for a state visit to France. The car waiting for him is a long 1928 Delage, an open topped limousine borrowed from the local government. It has only just been

repaired after a fatal accident of its own. The driver has been told to go slowly so the crowds can see the king.

It creep along at around 10 km an hour, slower than a jog. The driver later said it felt more like a hearse. A man named Vlado Chernobski breaks out of the crowd, jumps onto the running board, and fires a pistol into the car. The king is

hit and dies almost at once. A cavalry officer cuts the gunman down with his sword and the crowd beats him. He dies that evening. In the chaos, the French foreign minister is shot in the arm and bleeds to death later that afternoon. A

secret report later found the bullet that killed him came from a French police revolver. It stayed secret until 1974.

A newsreel camera was rolling just a few feet away. It's one of the first assassinations ever caught on film.

After the trial, France gives the delage to Yugoslavia. In 1936, it arrives in Belgrade and goes on display in a memorial room at the military museum. It even survives the German occupation.

Then the communists take power. They want nothing to do with the old royal family, so the car is taken off display and given a new job. It becomes a supply truck for an army officer's club, hauling potatoes and cabbages from a

city market. In 1951, it's given to a company in a small Serbian town, which passes it to a local driving school.

Nervous learners grind its gears for another decade. In 1962, it's stripped and dumped in a scrapyard. One collector managed to save a single piece, the front of the radiator with two headlamps. For years, it was kept at the

Automobile Museum in Bgrade. Then in 2024, that museum lost its building and the collection went into storage. The last surviving piece of a royal death car is in a storage unit somewhere in Serbia. The Delage was supposed to be a

memorial and ended up a work truck. Our last vehicle went the other way. It went from one of the darkest nights in American history to a working life on country roads and finally into a museum built by a car company. April 14th,

1865. Good Friday in Washington. A little after 8 in the evening, a dark green open carriage pulls up outside the White House. It was built the year before by Wood Brothers of New York. A gift to the president from a group of New York

merchants. It has six springs, solid silver lamps, and steps that fold down by themselves when the door opens. On each door in curling script are two letters A L. Abraham and Mary Lincoln climb in and the coachman drives them to

Ford's theater to see a comedy called Our American Cousin. The carriage waits outside. Lincoln never rides in it again. After the funeral, the carriage passes to his son, Robert. He doesn't keep it. It's sold to a doctor in New

York, Dr. FB Brewer, who uses Lincoln's carriage to make house [music] calls. For years, it bounces along country roads, rain and mud and all, until the leather is cracked and the paint is worn through. In 1889, a buyer comes along

who understands exactly what it is. Clement Studebaker. His family firm builds wagons, and it built a great many of them for the Union Army during the Civil War. He puts Lincoln's carriage on show in the company's Chicago showroom

and later brings it home to Southbend, Indiana. Every so often, it even comes out for a parade. By the turn of the century, Studebaker has started building something new, automobiles. The wagon company becomes a car company. The carriage is now kept at the Studebaker

National Museum in South Bend. When conservators restored it, they found its true colors. Dark green with maroon and gold hiding under later coats of black paint. And on each door, hidden under the paint, they found the two letters

again. A L. So, the oldest death vehicle in this story has no engine at all, but it's parked in a car museum saved by a company that went on to build cars. A Dodge thrown over a building. A Suburban

that became a family car. A royal limousine hauling cabbages. A carriage taking a doctor on his rounds. Most of these machines never got to retire. They went back to work because someone needed a car or a truck or a ride across town.

History stopped inside them for a few seconds. Then somebody turned the key.