Armored Cars, Now on the American Road

Mark Burton has been caught in some sticky situations.

He was in Amsterdam, he said, when a gang tried to kidnap him. His bodyguard twice thwarted attempted robberies in Mexico. And, in the early 1990s, when he was in the early stages of starting his armored car business, he was dining in a restaurant in Peru when a bomb blew out the windows.

“It’s been a fascinating ride,” he said.

Burton is the founder and chief executive of Armormax, a company in Ogden, Utah, that, much like Burton himself, does not traffic in nuance. The homepage of the Armormax website gets straight to the point: “We turn regular vehicles into extraordinary bulletproof machines.”

While Burton has spent most of his nearly 40 years in the industry decamping to hot spots where his products are most in demand — “I call him sometimes, and he’s like, ‘I’m in Lagos!’” said Sean Johnson, one of his customers — he no longer needs to travel quite so far from home to help people safeguard their Yukon Denalis and Cadillac Escalades from potential assault-rifle rounds and hand-grenade blasts.

That’s because more and more of those customers are from the United States. According to Burton, domestic sales account for 30 percent of Armormax’s overall business, a sixfold increase from five years ago.

Other industry leaders have gotten involved, too. In 2023, the Toronto-based INKAS Armored Vehicle Manufacturing opened its first U.S. dealership, Miami Armored, complete with a showroom.

“We serve government, we serve banks, we serve law enforcement — and we serve high-net-worth individuals,” said Philip Daskal, the vice president of INKAS USA. “But we also serve Plumber Joe who’s driving on the freeway. A stray bullet — these are crazy times — hits the bumper, and he needs to start thinking about taking care of his family.”

Surging interest in armored cars offers a window into American anxiety. The people who shop at Miami Armored, Daskal said, are concerned about carjackings, smash-and-grab thefts and road rage, which has become more prevalent in recent years, according to the Pew Research Center.

But there is no doubt that, for some, an armored car is a status symbol — the ultimate luxury accessory for one-percenters who already own panic rooms, guard dogs and perhaps a desert bunker or two. Burton said that five of the 20 wealthiest Americans are among Armormax’s clients.

“And we’ve done multiple, multiple, multiple vehicles for some of them,” he said.

All that protection doesn’t come cheap. Armoring packages generally start at around $50,000, in addition to the original cost of the vehicle itself.

Within the industry, the manufacturing process follows the same broad contours. A vehicle is stripped of its exterior paneling, all the way down to the frame, and then armoring is installed within the cavity, along with ballistic glass and a host of other custom features.

For Miami Armored and Armormax, discretion is paramount. In most cases, Daskal said, it can be difficult to tell that a vehicle has been retrofitted with bulletproof material. Consider it stealth wealth. “You don’t want to advertise that you’re driving around in an armored car,” he said.

Johnson, the Armormax customer, enlisted Burton to armor his Mercedes-Benz G-Class S.U.V. (a.k.a. G Wagon) after hearing about the company from a family friend who owns a professional sports team. It was 2021, during the pandemic, when cash-and-grab thefts were on the rise. Burton returned the vehicle to Johnson after about six weeks.

“Nobody notices that it’s armored,” Johnson, who works in the gambling industry and lives in Las Vegas, said. “Even valets have no idea.”

A century ago, steel was used to armor vehicles. The problem? Steel is extremely heavy. In the 1920s, for example, at the height of his underworld activities, Al Capone’s steel-plated Cadillac Town Sedan weighed seven tons, according to Jonathan Eig in the 2010 biography, “Get Capone: The Secret Plot That Captured America’s Most Wanted Gangster.”

Armormax now uses a synthetic fiber laminate that weighs three pounds per square foot, which typically adds less than 500 pounds to a vehicle equipped with handgun-level protection, Burton said.

Armormax, Burton said, has retrofitted more than 10,000 vehicles since its inception. And while most are bound for overseas destinations, Burton said he had been hearing from a growing number of American families who were concerned about safety.

“It started during Covid, with the riots,” he said. “These people are looking for peace of mind.”

Historically, law-abiding motorists are not the only ones who have sought bulletproof protection for their vehicles. Miami Armored has an in-house compliance department that conducts due diligence on potential customers, including full background checks. For companies that are purchasing vehicles, Miami Armored requires passport copies from all shareholders listed in the articles of incorporation.

Like Daskal, Burton said his customers were thoroughly vetted.

“Do we deal with mobsters? No,” Burton said. “Do we deal with the cartels? Absolutely not. We don’t deal in cash, so that’s another big factor. The other thing to remember is that these are defensive vehicles. It’s not like we’re putting rocket launchers on them.”

Then again, not everyone wants to blend in. Karyn Kobayashi, a former producer in the entertainment industry, owns a Rezvani Tank: a street-legal, $350,000 behemoth that comes equipped with ballistics armoring, electrified door handles, a ramming bumper, thermal night vision and gas masks. She paid extra for side windows that go down.

“I need to be able to hit the drive-through at In-N-Out Burger,” Kobayashi said.

The vehicle is a monster. If Optimus Prime from the Transformers and a Jeep Wrangler had a baby, it would be the Rezvani Tank. Kobayashi, who is 5 feet 7 inches tall, says she feels like a Tyrannosaurus rex whenever she drives it.

“If we make a wrong turn and we’re caught in some sort of protest, I feel safe,” she said.

Ferris Rezvani, the founder of Rezvani Motors, said in an interview that his childhood love of fighter planes and “the powerfulness they evoked” inspired him to start his company in 2014. Based in Irving, Calif., Rezvani Motors produces 30 to 50 vehicles a year, half of them armored. Models include the Vengeance and the Beast. They are not for introverts.

“You definitely have a lot of conversations at the gas station,” Rezvani said.

For Kobayashi, a life in the public lens prompted her desire for additional security. Her husband, Jim Jacobs, co-wrote the musical “Grease,” and their son, Tobyn Jacobs, 24, has a large social media following as an anime artist and content creator. The family also has a Lamborghini Urus, two Porsches and a Mercedes-Benz coupe.

“But I needed at least one car that has some kind of armoring,” Kobayashi said, adding: “Tobyn’s young, so I started to see a lot of weird stalker-type people. And this is a generation that I have no idea what’s going through their minds.”

The general state of the world hardly helps, said Kobayashi, who described herself as a “prepper.” All civilizations “kind of crash” after 250 years, she said. “I’m not saying there’s a zombie apocalypse coming,” she said. “But we’re prepared.”

She knows she’s not alone in her upscale neighborhood north of San Diego. “Everyone here has money,” Kobayashi said, “and everyone has bulletproof cars.”

Even if some are more noticeable than others.