Gary Relf, director of Armoured Car Services, said: “Just looking at the front windscreen, that looks armoured. I’m sitting in an armoured vehicle now. We build armoured vehicles. That does look armoured to me.”
Relf, a former traffic police officer who runs a company providing protective vehicles to wealthy individuals, heads of state and religious leaders, said it could be difficult to spot so-called “auto-armour”, but black banding across a windscreen was usually a giveaway.
“When we armour a vehicle, we take every kind of technical element out, the roof, the seats, the floor, the carpet, and then we put the armouring in, and we replace it all afterwards, so you might never know.
Donald Trump’s presidential car, the Beast, at Turnberry golf course on Saturday.Credit: Getty Images
“But the thing that gives it away is the front windscreen.”
As with other armoured vehicles, Trump’s reinforced golf buggy’s windscreen features a black band around it.
One of UK policing’s foremost experts in armoured vehicles, who asked to remain anonymous due to the confidential nature of his work agreed with this assessment.
“From those photos, that is 100 per cent armoured,” he said. “The windscreen is a giveaway, as are the side panels, doors, and the large panel at the rear above the load tray.”
Police and soldiers search the Turnberry golf course before Trump’s visit.Credit: Getty Images
He identified its model as a Polaris Ranger XP and revealed Mr Trump’s security golf cart would have been specially modified to offer its passengers as much protection as possible, while remaining light enough to not damage the course.
The front of the buggy and its wheels and tyres are not significantly adapted from the off-the-shelf model, because it’s a “defensive, not offensive” armoured vehicle, he said.
“Sometimes you just have an armoured cell for the passengers,” he explained. “It’s not a tank. It’s defensive, not offensive.”
And it’s likely to be tailored to specific threats, with the tinting of the glass giving away how secure it is.
Police snipers on the roof of the Trump Turnberry Hotel on Saturday.Credit: Getty Images
“As far as armouring goes, the world is your oyster. If your threat is someone with a baseball bat, you might fit plexiglass. But if it’s a 7.62mm Dragunov sniper rifle with a full metal jacket bullet, then you need thicker transparent armour,” he said, referring to the layers of laminate which, combined with layers of glass, are used to make bullet-proof windows.
“The thicker the transparent armouring, the more tinted the window looks,” he added.
A US Secret Service spokesman said: “The US Secret Service employs a variety of tools and resources to safeguard our protectees. In order to maintain operational security, the Secret Service does not discuss the specific means and methods used to conduct our protective operations.”
Loading
Polaris vehicles are widely used in the UK by rural police teams, mountain rescue and farmers. But the company also supplies military vehicles to US law enforcement and offers in-house armouring.
Trump’s security team is likely making sure the US president has somewhere to go for protection in case of a third assassination attempt.
On September 15, 2024, guards spotted a man, suspected to be 58-year-old Ryan Wesley Routh, aiming a rifle from shrubbery at a member of Trump’s security team at West Palm Beach, Florida.
The gunman was chased away before firing a shot, but the episode underscored how exposed Trump is while pursuing his favourite sport.
Loading
Just two months previously, Trump had survived an assassination attempt when shots were fired from an AR-15-style rifle as he spoke at an open-air campaign rally near Butler in Pennsylvania on July 13. One of the bullets clipped his ear and 20-year-old Thomas Crooks, the gunman, was shot and killed by the US Secret Service.
“This stuff is all about threat assessment. What is the threat? Is it a known threat? An unknown threat? Where do we set that level of what we’ve got to do?” the unnamed security expert added.
