But all of those "real things" were imitations stocked with two red paint-splattered mannequins in the front seat.
Turns out, the car does exist, but not in a place one would associate with the outlaw duo.
Lawmen gather around the bullet-riddled car driven by Clyde Barrow after ambushing Barrow and Bonnie Parker in rural Bienville Parish on May 23, 1934. The car has passed through several owners and is now on display at Buffalo Bill Resort and Casino in Primm, Nevada.
The old car has been a tourist attraction at the Buffalo Bill Resort & Casino in Primm, Nevada, since 2022.
Before that, it had been a main attraction at Whiskey Pete's Hotel and Casino, also in Primm, since 1988. Both casinos are owned by Primm Valley Resorts.
But, of course, that's the end of a story that began when Clyde Barrow stole Jesse and Ruth Warren's newly purchased Ford Fordor Deluxe Sedan from their Topeka, Kansas, driveway in April 1934. Some accounts describe it as olive green, but Perry Carver said that's not quite accurate.
The Ford Fodor Deluxe sedan driven by Clyde Barrow when he and his partner, Bonnie Parker, were ambushed by lawmen near Gibsland is on exhibit at Buffalo Bill's Resort and Casino in Primm, Nevada.
"It's a Cordova gray," said Carver, owner and operator of the Bonnie and Clyde Ambush Museum in Gibsland. "But if it's taken outside, it does have a kind of a green tint."
The vehicle not only was equipped with an 85 horsepower V8 engine but also such state-of-the-art perks like bumper guards, a steel cover for the spare tire on the back and safety glass windows. Crowning the hood was a chrome greyhound ornament now missing from the car.
A later owner, Ted Toddy, gave the ornament to Carver, who now displays it in the Gibsland museum. Carver purchased the museum from Boots Hinton — son of Dallas County Deputy Sheriff Ted Hinton, who was part of the posse that killed the outlaw duo.
The chrome greyhound hood ornament, center, that once crowned the Ford Deluxe Sedan that carried Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker when they were ambushed in Bienville Parish in 1934 is on exhibit in the Bonnie and Clyde Ambush Museum in Gibsland.
Carver was 8 years old when he first met Toddy, a friend of his parents. They all lived in Atlanta, and Toddy, then sole owner of the Ford Deluxe, allowed Carver to play in it.
Blood stains in the front
"There were blood stains in the front, and one of Bonnie's teeth was still lodged into the floor board on the passenger's side," Carver said.
Evidence of Clyde's shattered brain was splattered in the back seat. That was Toddy's way of keeping the car authentic while showing it at carnivals, fairs and other events.
May 23, 2024, marked the 90th anniversary of the notorious ambush of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker at the top of the hill shown here on La. 154, the duo was gunned down by lawmen waiting for them in the woods as they passed.
No one ever bothered to clean the vehicle until Toddy sold it. According to a 2016 article in Living Las Vegas magazine, the car was released back to Ruth Warren, who let it sit in her driveway before leasing it out for display at the Topeka Fairgrounds.
"After a short time, the car was leased to Charles Stanley's traveling carnival as a sideshow attraction, and allegedly, made a brief appearance in the 1945 movie, 'Killers All,'" the article states.
Stanley eventually bought the car outright from Ruth Warren for $3,500 and sold it to Toddy in 1960 for $14,500.
A chipped and damaged monument marks the spot where Bonnie and Clyde were ambushed by a posse of lawmen on La. 154 in Bienville Parish.
Ending up in Nevada
Last March, the Las Vegas Review-Journal took notice of the car and did its own digging into how it ended up in Primm.
Finally, casino owner "Peter Simon bought the car at a Massachusetts car auction in 1973 for $175,000, or about $1.2 million today," the newspaper's March 19, 2024, article states. "It was the highest-priced antique car in the world at the time."
The 22-year-old Simon built a museum inside the casino he inherited from his dad, Pop's Oasis along U.S. 91, to house the car, along with other artifacts affiliated with the duo.
The Ford Fodor Deluxe sedan driven by Clyde Barrow when he and his partner, Bonnie Parker, were ambushed by lawmen near Gibsland is on exhibit at Buffalo Bill's Resort and Casino in Primm, Nevada.
Between 1973 and 1975, the museum drew in more than 100,000 visitors. By the end of 1975, Simon planned to sell the car. According to the Las Vegas Journal Review, he "felt it would be in bad taste to keep it around amid the construction of the Jean Conservation Camp, a minimum security prison on the edge of town for female offenders."
"The car was later bought by Gary Primm, son of Primm’s namesake Ernest Primm, for $250,000 in 1988 at auction after Simon sold Pop’s Oasis and liquidated everything in it from vehicles to floor polisher," the article states. "The car went on display at Whiskey Pete’s in 1988, and was joined over a decade later by Barrow’s bloodied shirt."
A bloody shirt
That shirt is now displayed beside the car in Buffalo Bill's. In the meantime, Carver dreams of one day purchasing that ambush shirt worn by the 25-year-old Clyde Chestnut Barrow, who was 20 years old when he met 19-year-old Bonnie Elizabeth Parker at a mutual friend's house in West Dallas.
A second monument commemorating the lawmen who brought down Bonnie Parker and Clyde Parker was placed at the ambush site along La. 154 near Gibsland in 2014.
The outlaw duo traveled the central and southern United States with their gang between 1932 and 1934, robbing banks and committing multiple murders and kidnappings. The couple also sent photos of themselves holding guns to newspapers, who not only printed the images but chronicled their exploits.
For years, only a stark, white monument marked the spot of the ambush site 10 minutes south of Gibsland. In 2014, the Bienville Parish Police Jury erected a second marker commemorating the six lawmen in the posse.
The couple's story continues to spawn songs, books and movies, the 1967 Warren Beatty-Faye Dunaway classic film being the most iconic.
Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty starred in the 1967 classic movie, "Bonnie & Clyde". Here, they pose next to the movie version of the ambush car, which later was on loan for a year to the Bonnie and Clyde Ambush Museum in Gibsland.
"But the right car wasn't used in the movie," Carver said, laughing. "It was a 1934 Ford, but it was the wrong model."
As for the car itself, only its bullet holes tell the story of that day.
"They cleaned the inside when they moved it to Primm, so it's no longer historically accurate," Carver said. "But that car is the reason I'm in Gibsland. I wanted to learn everything I could about Bonnie and Clyde when I came here, and now I own the museum."
Email Robin Miller at romiller@theadvocate.com.
