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So the car at the museum might be a fake?

I contacted the museum’s curator, Charles Lemons, who gave me what seemed to be a logical explanation. The car, he said, had been rebuilt shortly after the accident from the firewall forward, mostly with 1939 parts including the hood, bumpers, grill, ornaments, and lights. The engine was not original and the grill had been fashioned by a craftsman who got the details wrong—specifically, he did not know that the direction of the lines on the distinctive grill should be vertical rather than horizontal, as they are on the car at the museum. But everything else from the front windshield back, including the front driver’s compartment, spacious rear passenger area where Patton and Gay sat, as well as the car’s entire frame and chassis cementing body and wheels, was authentic. It was the original 1938 car, he said—“the one used by
General Patton on 9 December 1945,” as a museum handout he sent me phrased it. The difference is it has been partially rebuilt. So Houston’s observation is right, he acknowledged, but pertains only to the front third.

But then he began to hedge.

The car’s history is spotty, especially immediately after the accident. It is known from pictures and newspaper stories at the time that the car Patton was injured in was a 1938 Series 75 Cadillac sedan. Cadillac exported them. A number were in Europe and this one, original owner unknown, apparently was captured from the Germans by Patton’s troops as they sped across France after D-Day. In a letter to the museum, according to an eleven-page museum publication entitled “The ‘Patton’ Cadillac,” Brigadier General William Birdsong wrote that while he was a major in Third Army, his battalion captured a “Cadillac limousine” during a fight for Chartres, France, August 17-18, 1944, and that the car was eventually sent to Patton at Third Army Headquarters via one of Birdsong’s bosses, Major General LeRoy Irwin, 5
^th
Infantry Division commander. Confirming receipt of the spoil, according to the museum, General Patton wrote back to General Irwin, “My Dear Red: You were very generous indeed to send me the lovely automobile captured by the Third Battalion, 11
^th
Infantry Regiment under Major Birdsong . . . . Please express. . . my appreciation . . . .”
⁴

There are a few photographs of the car at various Patton headquarters following the war, two of them in the museum publication about the car. They show a 1938 Series 75 “Imperial” sedan, as do several other photos taken right after the accident. Then there is a dearth of information about the car at least for several months, if not approaching an entire year. Where did the car go immediately after the accident? They have no official records about that, said Lemons. As far as he knew, such records
do not exist. However, formerly secret Seventh Army Public Relations documents I found regarding handling of information to the press during Patton’s hospitalization reveal that “General Patton’s car was taken to the military police motor pool and later turned over to the Seventh Army collecting point,” whatever and wherever that was. What happened there? Was the car stripped of incriminating evidence? It is certainly possible.

Two later pictures in the museum publication show the car in what is listed as “the Salvage Yard.” One photo is undated and the other is labeled “circa 1946.” Both pictures show the front axle and wheels missing and damage to the front that occurred in the accident. Lemons believes these pictures show a stage of stripping or cannibalization—but does not know for sure. No pictures, pre-or post-accident, reveal the car’s interior, which is its most important part in regard to searching for evidence of the cause of Patton’s injuries. Following this “salvage yard” period, according to Lemon, the car was rebuilt with the 1939 front and a new engine which, interestingly, he says appears to be an M24 light tank engine, which he said was also built by Cadillac. From there it was put back in service as a car for the commanding general of the U.S. “Constabulary,” the downsized, reorganized occupation forces charged with keeping the peace after the war fighting forces had left. “In 1951,” according to museum records, “the car was rediscovered and arrangements were made to ship it to the Patton Museum, where it arrived in November of that year.”

A further problem clouding the car’s pedigree, conceded Lemons, was the fact that they had not been able to locate a Vehicle Identification Number, or VIN, on the car at the museum. The number, permanently placed on the chassis, and sometimes other surfaces, is unique to every car and gives specific information about it such as its maker and year produced. Law enforcement
uses the VIN to establish automobile identity. Potential buyers of used cars can trace its damage history with the VIN. “We’ve scraped paint but so far nothing,” said Lemons. “If we could find the VIN, we could find out a whole lot of things.”

Obviously, the VIN was something I should look for. But I knew little about cars. I contacted General Motors and they referred me to their Cadillac history expert, Matt Larson, a retired Navy commander, member of classic car associations, author of at least one book on Cadillacs, and a onetime owner of a 1938 Cadillac Series 75 car just like the one Patton was injured in. Larson had actually visited the museum with a car group in 2001 and become suspicious of the Patton car himself. But they had not let him inspect it closer and he was skeptical that I would be able to do any better. But in the interim there had been a change of management, and the new museum director, Frank Jardim, assured me I would get access. He wanted to know the truth, too. So, although Larson lived in Detroit, he agreed to a lengthy drive down to Kentucky to meet me at the museum after I flew in from Los Angeles.

We met on a Saturday, which was good—visitor traffic was light. The museum staff was not harried. A young soldier, Owen Yeager of Rockford, Illinois, was assigned to be our escort. The car, cordoned off with ropes and a sign to keep others from touching it, was dark olive drab and well kept. Larson had brought a camera and set about a planned inspection. I went immediately to the rear passenger compartment and began checking the seat where Patton and Gay had sat. It stretched across the car’s width and was a light tan or grey, as was the entire interior which seemed plush. The seat easily could accommodate three passengers. But in a letdown—at least to me—it was relatively clean and free of anything resembling bloodstains. Thinking about it later, I do not know why I had expected traces of the blood reported by
Woodring and others still to be there. If the car had later been used by Constabulary brass it most probably would have been cleaned up. Still, would not the Army or some entity have kept the stained upholstery for history’s sake? I do not buy the argument frequently advanced that the accident was not important at the time. Patton’s accident, and especially his death, was front page news throughout the world.

Nevertheless, no blood was the reality. And as I inspected the compartment, I could not find any evidence of Patton’s head hitting and damaging anything in the car either. There was a light fixture on the roof of the compartment directly above the middle of the seat. It was about the size of a soap bar and appeared to be made of chrome and plastic—not very heavy or stable. But it was in perfect condition. For Patton to have hit it with his head he would have had to have flown almost directly upward and toward the middle of the roof which did not seem likely given the probable momentum in the crash. It would have carried him forward, not up.

In front of the seat, perhaps three to four feet ahead, was the partition that separated the two passenger compartments—front and rear. It had a full window in its upper half. The window was set in and surrounded by a thin, mahogany-like casing which had a small clock embedded at the base, roughly in the middle of the partition. Neither the clock nor the casing protruded very much. But either, I suppose, if hit, could have caused a cut. But if he had hit the window, it was not shatterproof, according to information Larson had sent me on the car. Patton most probably would have gone through the glass and cut himself even worse than he did. He likely would have stuck there, speared on a shard. But there was not any evidence of damage to any part of the partition, including the clock. In addition, below the window, embedded in the lower half of the partition, were two pullout seats. If employed,
two more passengers could sit in the back. But if they had been employed, Patton could not have been catapulted forward. The seat would have been in his way.

By this time, Larson, deeply involved in his inspection, was coming to a conclusion which, if true, would affect much of my passenger compartment speculation. He told me he had seen enough of the car to begin thinking the entire vehicle was 1939—not just the front. He began showing me why. If the car was the original that had been in the accident, the chassis, which extends from back to front on the underside of the entire car and basically holds it together, would show evidence of damage and repair at the point where the car and truck collided—the right front bumper area. There was none. Furthermore, he said, the dashboard was 1939; as were the running boards, door handles, rear bumper, and tail lights. There were only so many differences between the 1938 and 1939 models, which look very much alike, he said, and he was covering most of them. Weeks later, after he had time to check Cadillac manuals and archives, he wrote to me that unequivocally he believed the car was entirely a 1939 Cadillac, not a rebuilt 1938: “On examination of the car in the museum, ALL [sic] of the visual difference cues are distinctly 1939 features, not 1938.... There are no visible signals of anyone making major changes.” In addition to the similarities he had already pointed out at the museum, he further noted that the car’s “instrument cluster” was 1939 and the “tan Weise cloth interior shows all signs of being original . . . it is not a replacement interior done during the ‘restoration.’” The trunk handle, rear license plate mount, and hubcaps were 1939.

Most surprising were his findings about the VIN. Before we left the museum, he located what was left of it. It was down by the engine base on one of the flat surfaces behind the left engine
mount. I had to stick my head under the hood and search hard with a flashlight while leaning over the bumper before I finally saw it—a short, flat strip of chassis metal barely visible—and for good reason. Most of the number had been crudely scratched out. You could see the haphazard striations on it going every which way. Only a few numbers were faintly showing. It was obvious someone had purposely tried to remove it. Why? In his later report, Larson wrote, “The serial number [VIN] of the museum car has intentionally been filed down at some time to obliterate it and render the car unidentifiable.... There is no mistaking that the serial number is intentionally obliterated.”

In addition, he wrote, the “Body by Fisher” tag on the car was “phony.” It was conspicuously displayed on the high left side of the cowl, the divider between the engine and the passenger compartments to which, among other items, the car’s windshield and dashboard are fastened. The problem, he wrote, was that Fisher, a famous car body craftsman company, did not make the Series 75 bodies. Fleetwood did. “Cadillac Motor Car Company would not have shipped any Series 75 car with a Fisher Body tag—the prestige position of large series Fleetwood bodied cars was of particular importance and value to Cadillac Motor Car Company.” So why had such a tag been affixed? Who had put it there? Even if Fisher
had
made the body, the identification number on the tag—“1034,” designating it as the one thousand thirty-fourth such body manufactured—was “impossible.” The specific 75 style of Patton’s Cadillac was “7533”—one of the largest models made. Records show there were only 479 of that style body built in 1938. Further, the type of paint listed on the Fisher tag to be applied to the body—number “558”—did not exist for 1938 models. “Paint number 558 is not found in any 1938 record in the GM Heritage Center archives,” he wrote.

Both Larson and I had hoped to examine museum records on the car as part of our visit. They might provide some answers. We had been told we could. But when we arrived that Saturday, the museum assistant, Ivon Bennett, informed us that the files were locked in a safe. We would have to return another day. We were out of luck on that score. We both had come very long distances on tight schedules and limited budgets and were leaving Kentucky that evening. Larson lamented not having access. Nevertheless, he wrote, “Although not proven, it appears that the Fisher body tag attached to the left side of the cowl... is an attempt to make the car appear to be a 1938 Cadillac Series 75.” He found another number he believes is a VIN elsewhere on the body and said it was not unusual for VIN numbers to be affixed twice on a car. It is Larson’s belief that that number 3290473—which belongs to a 1939 Series Cadillac shipped to Antwerp, Belgium on November 18, 1938
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—identifies the Cadillac at the museum. I sent Larson’s report to the museum, but so far have received no response. Apparently, unless the museum can provide compelling rebuttal, the car it advertises as Patton’s is not Patton’s. It is just a good facsimile. Larson put in his report that there were some simple chemical methods used by law enforcement on weapons with filed down serial numbers that could be used to resurrect the obliterated VIN should the museum wish to pursue it.

I do not think the museum has intentionally mislabeled its Cadillac. At some point in its history—before it got to the Constabulary motor pool—the real Patton car, the 1938 Cadillac, disappeared and the current fraudulent car apparently was substituted. Who gave it to the Constabulary? There may have been
records, but they are probably gone now—purged, in my opinion, just like the accident reports. By the time the Constabulary took possession, the car was already believed to be Patton’s. No one, for whatever reasons, chose to investigate. And if they had, would they have found the filed down VIN? Or noticed the phony Fisher tag? It has eluded detection prior to my evaluation, judging from the fact that I am the first to mention it in print. Even the car’s supposed “light tank” engine is in dispute. Contrary to what Curator Lemons told me, Larson says the motor’s serial number—487620455—indicates “a 1948 engine manufactured for a Series 76 long wheelbase commercial chassis, as used for a hearse or ambulance”—not a tank. The first two numbers denote year. “I found none of the typical military features on the engine,” he wrote. But at least we apparently now know when it was put in the car—approximately 1948 or after.