SS-100-X

Above, President and Mrs. Nixon in the SS-100-X limousine in 1972 at the Century Plaza Hotel.
National Archives photo.

Since this year marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, there will be many articles and stories in the major news media.

One such story appeared yesterday in the Dallas Morning News (I first saw it in the Los Angeles Daily News). It is on the 1961 Lincoln Continental that the President was riding in when he was shot.

The article has many interesting facts about the car:

...the open-top car that President John F. Kennedy waved from on a sunny day in Dallas, Nov. 22, 1963, could not have been more different. That car was fashioned from a stock 1961 Lincoln Continental four-door convertible — retail price $7,347 — that had rolled off the assembly line at parent company Ford’s plant in Wixom, Mich.

The White House leased it from Ford for a token $500 a year and sent it off for $200,000 in modifications by elite custom coachbuilder Hess and Eisenhardt in Cincinnati, Ohio. (The firm’s other high-profile clients included the Queen of England.) In the process, the car gained Secret Service codenames — SS-100-X and X-100 — and the grille of a 1962 model, so it appeared right up to date.

Kennedy’s Lincoln, sensationally dubbed the “Death Car” in a 1964 Associated Press story, was hastily rebuilt after the assassination. Project name? The Quick Fix. The logic was straightforward, according to Henry Ford [Museum] curator Anderson. “It takes four years or so to get one of these done, from the original planning to its delivery to the White House. They simply didn’t have the time to build a new car.

 The final price tag for project Quick Fix was an estimated $500,000.

Improbably, the car stayed in service through President Richard Nixon’s administration and into 1977, Jimmy Carter’s administration’s first year. It was retired late that year and returned to Ford. The automaker donated it to The Henry Ford museum, where curator Anderson says it remains one of the museum’s most popular exhibits.

Above, President Nixon shakes hands from the roof opening.  I am at the arrow.
National Archives photo.

I saw the car in 1972 when President Nixon arrived at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles for a fundraising dinner.  I was in the parking lot near where the President was driven alongside the crowd of supporters.  It didn't occur to me that the limousine was the Kennedy SS-100-X until I saw photos of it on display at the Henry Ford Museum and compared them to the photos I have of the Nixon Century Plaza visit.

In 1984, I was a member of the California Reagan Delegation to the Republican National Convention in Dallas, Texas.  While there, I stopped by the assassination site in Dealey Plaza and took photographs of the scene from several angles.  I will post a detailed article on this in November.

To read the full article, go here.