Infamous cars

The inch-thick bulletproof glass and 3,000 pounds of steel armor plating in Prohibition-era gangster Al Capone's Cadillac protected him on the Chicago streets. When he was convicted of tax evasion in 1931 and sent to Alcatraz, the U.S. Treasury Department reportedly impounded the Cadillac, and the Secret Service later borrowed it for President Franklin D. Roosevelt's security detail in 1942. In August 2010, the estate of Texas car collector John M. O'Quinn tried to auction it off, but failed to fetch the minimum price of $450,000 and decided to keep it.

Bing: Al Capone

In his pre-revolutionary days, Che Guevara and his friend Alberto Granado drove a 500cc Norton motorcycle dubbed "The Mighty One" through South America on an eight-month journey — an adventure chronicled in the 2004 movie "The Motorcycle Diaries." Guevara is closely associated with the bike even though it was owned by Granado. "You had a rebel and the perfect transportation for a rebel — the motorcycle," Kendall says. The whereabouts of the original bike are unknown, but a replica is on display at the Che Guevara Museum in Alta Gracia, Argentina.

Photo Provided By: Yesterdays

Official Website: Norton Motorcycles

After the infamous O.J. Simpson car chase was broadcast on live television in 1994, the white Ford Bronco that carried Simpson took on an identity of its own. "The Bronco precipitated an entire new genre of police chase," Kendall says. "People said, 'Hey, if O.J. can run, I can run, too.'" The car was owned by former National Football League player and Simpson pal Al Cowlings. Cowlings reportedly unloaded the Bronco at a private sale for $75,000, but not before being involved in more controversy. He was sued in late 1994 for reneging on a contract to sell the car to celebrity memorabilia company Startifacts.

View Slideshow:  World's Most Infamous Vehicles

"Hitler's favorite car was the Mercedes 770K," Kendall says. Not that Hitler could drive. "He liked to be driven, and he had big open cars that were very imposing and gave him a commanding presence," Kendall says. In 1971, the Canadian War Museum received a 770K believed to be from Hitler's fleet; it's one of the museum's most popular attractions. And in 2009, an armored 770K also thought to have been Hitler's was discovered in a barn in Germany; a Russian billionaire reportedly bought it.

Bing Images: Mercedes-Benz 770K

When NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt spun into a concrete retaining wall at nearly 160 mph on the last lap of the 2001 Daytona 500, he died instantly. "The car was just a mess," Patti Dobler, the paramedic who pulled Earnhardt from the wreck, told Sports Illustrated during a re-enactment. "The whole front end was just demolished." The original stock car was owned by Richard Childress Racing, for which Earnhardt raced. Childress had the original car destroyed. But a replica is on display at the Richard Childress Racing Museum in Welcome, N.C.

Video: NASCAR Hall of Fame — Dale Earnhardt

During his 11-month, $300,000 bank-robbing spree in the Midwest in the 1930s, John Dillinger used a red Essex Terraplane as his getaway car. A shootout with police in St. Paul, Minn., eventually left a bullet in Dillinger's left leg and two in a front panel of the car. But he managed to elude J. Edgar Hoover's FBI agents for several more months until they finally shot him in a Chicago alley. The car — bullets and all — is on display at the National Museum of Crime and Punishment in Washington, D.C.

Bing: John Dillinger

French President Charles de Gaulle was a fan of Citroëns when he took office, but after surviving an assassination attempt by machine-gun fire while riding in a Citroën DS in 1962, he became even more enthusiastic about the car. "After the assassination attempt ... [de Gaulle] even refused to travel in an armored Rambler," says Roland Biache of PSA Peugeot Citroën. "He wanted his DS." That DS is now on display at the Charles de Gaulle Birthplace Museum in Lille, France.

Bing Images: Citroën

In 1996, rapper Tupac Shakur was gunned down at a Las Vegas intersection while sitting in the passenger seat of Death Row Records founder Suge Knight's black BMW 750iL. Less than a week later, Shakur died from his injuries; the crime has never been solved. Cathy Scott, author of "The Killing of Tupac Shakur," says the car had been leased to Death Row at the time of the shooting, was impounded after the murder, and was eventually released to the leasing company and sold to a private buyer.

Bing: Tupac Shakur

Serial killer Ted Bundy removed the passenger seat of his beige Volkswagen Beetle to make space for the bodies of the young female college students he lured into the car during his mid-1970s killing spree. A few years later, a pair of Utah sheriff's deputies bought the car at auction for $975, and then in 1997 turned a profit on it. They listed the car for $25,000 in an ad in The New York Times classified section, and it was bought by a collector in upstate New York. He then turned around and leased it to the National Museum of Crime and Punishment in Washington, D.C., where it now resides.

Bing Videos: Volkswagen Beetle

"That car is no longer about transportation," Kendall says of the Escalade that Woods wrecked to the tune of $5,000 to $8,000 on Nov. 27, 2009. "It is the SUV that was part of the downfall of this revered sports leader." Woods didn't own the car; it was a loaner from General Motors, which planned to use it as a promotional vehicle or for other internal purposes after the crash. Eventually, it will be sold. "These kinds of vehicles almost always go through a formal auction process," Cadillac spokesman David Caldwell told USA Today.

Photo Provided By: TMZ.com

Video: 2009 Cadillac Escalade

Claire Martin has written for The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Outside magazine. She's the former deputy editor of Men's Journal and currently lives in Los Angeles, where she covers technology, travel and food.

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