Becoming famous is easy: you either do something really good or something equally or more evil. Same goes with cars, too. There are endless articles on history's favourite cars: cars that changed the world, but here we would deviate just a bit from the usual and indulge our senses in something that is rather evil. While famous cars are everywhere, infamous ones are somewhat rarer to find. Here we will take a look at some of the most infamous cars from the history of the world.American General Patton was well known for his controversial outspokenness. He had an equally controversial death, too. General Patton experienced his last day in this world in the back seat of his military staff car on December 9th 1945. The accident happened just a few months after the Japanese surrendered and ended the Second World War.
Patton's Cadillac Model 75 collided with a truck in a low speed accident. Nobody else except the General was hurt. The American General hit his head that caused a spinal injury. He was paralysed from the neck down and 12 days later he died.
The Cadillac was later repaired and used by other Generals. The famous car still exists and is on display at the General George Patton Museum at Fort Knox in Kentucky.
When Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand in June 1914, no one thought that it would result in a world war. Franz Ferdinand was riding in his Graf & Stift Double Phaeton through the streets of Sarajevo when he was shot. Earlier that day, one Princip's fellow plotters threw a grenade on Ferdinand's car, but it missed the targeted car and blew up another car.
Later Princip stumbled upon the archduke when his driver made a wrong turn on the way to visit those injured in the earlier blast. Princip seized the chance and killed Ferdinand and his wife Sophie. The assassination led to the outbreak of First World War and the Graf & Stift Double Phaeton became a car to have one of the most tainted histories.
Today, Ferdinand's car as well as the other items associated with the assassination is on a permanent display in the Museum of Military History in Vienna, Austria.
French President Charles de Gaulle was a diehard Citroen enthusiast when he took office. But after surviving an assassination attempt by machine-gun fire while riding in a Citroen DS in 1962, his love for the car only went a notch higher.
"After the assassination attempt ... [de Gaulle] even refused to travel in an armoured Rambler," says Roland Biache of PSA Peugeot Citroen. "He wanted his DS." That Citroen DS is now on display at the Charles de Gaulle Birthplace Museum in Lille, France.
In 1996, rap artist Tupac Shakur was shot down at a Las Vegas intersection while sitting in the passenger seat of a of Death Row Records founder Suge Knight's black BMW 750iL. A few days later, Shakur succumbed to the injuries and died. The crime remains unsolved. The car was leased to Death Row at the time of the shooting, and was later impounded, and was eventually released to the leasing company and sold to a private buyer.
Serial killer Ted Bundy got rid of the rear passenger seats of his Volkswagen Beetle to make room for young female college students that he baited into the car during his killing spree that lasted for almost five years during 1974 and 1978. Bundy was executed by electric chair in Florida in January 1989.
A couple of years later, Utah Sheriff's deputies purchased the car at an auction for $975, which they later sold to a private collector in upstate New York. Later, he leased the beige VW Beetle to the National Museum of Crime and Punishment in Washington, DC, where it currently resides.
Tiger Woods created one of the biggest controversies of the decade when he drove into a fire hydrant and a tree while trying to escape his furious golf-club wielding wife in 2009. The accident happened at around 2.30am on the morning of November 27, 2009, shortly after an American supermarket tabloid reported Woods' extra marital affairs.
The Cadillac Escalade became an important part of the downfall of one of the most revered sports person in this world. It's a different thing that Woods did not own the car; it was loaned from General Motors. Eventually, the car will be auctioned. "These kinds of vehicles almost always go through a formal auction process," Cadillac spokesman David Caldwell said in an interview.
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