Guess Who’s Offering An Anti-Terrorist Option To Their Cars
Friday, 1. June 2018
Years ago I was the ‘Man To Go To’ for many middle eastern members of their various royal families when they wanted to buy anti-terror protected cars. Most were top of the range stretched or LWB Mercedes S Class. We would buy the cars from the factory and delivered to a company near Gatwick who would carry out all of the security modifications.
It generally took about 3 months, the car with its armour plated body and bullet-proof glass and special bullet-proof tyres (yes there is such a thing) ended up weighing about 4 times its original weight and cost around 4 times the original cost.
They obviously didn’t need finance but each car had to be overseen by me personally but on the bright side I made a lot of money out of each car. They generally kept the cars in garages under West End houses for use when they came over for a visit.
They tended to keep them for 2 years then part exchange for a new car. On average, after 2 years they had travelled less than 1,000 miles. It cost them a fortune but such was their paranoia regarding safety and security. Who would have thought that many years later a specialist armour plating company would modify a fairly standard family car and for it to be available from a franchised dealer (so I’ve been told)?
An anti-terrorist car in their line up – what’s it all coming to? And I’m not talking Bentley, Mercedes, BMW or Jaguar. I’m talking Skoda – a Skoda Superb Estate. The cars are modified by a British based company and takes about 4 weeks to modify but when the bodywork has been modified and the glass replaced by bulletproof glass the car will meet PAS 300 standards for ballistic and blast protection.
The modified car will weigh much more making the acceleration lower than the standard car’s, 0-60 in 8.4 seconds with the top speed dropping about 20 miles per hour. Rather than bullet-proof tyres they have modified special wheels that will still work even if the tyre is full of holes.
It seems that if you have the money you can have one but with a price tag starting from £118,688 I think I’ll pass. Although I seem to recall reading that some police forces were looking at Skoda Superbs as replacements for current cars – maybe this is why! By Graham Hill
