The Real French Connection Drug Car

The iconic movie "The French Connection" is based on an infamous New York City drug case that began when two narcotics detectives started tailing a low-level mobster and ended up uncovering a major heroin-smuggling ring based in France.

To get the heroin into the United States in the French Connection case, the French convinced a well-known television personality, Jacques Angelvin, to bring a car with him on his upcoming tour of the States. They would load the car up with drugs and ship it in the cargo hold of the cruise liner Angelvin was taking across the Atlantic. All Angelvin had to do was escort the car over, and a stateside associate would meet it at the dock.

The Invicta was well-known among drug smugglers for its spacious hiding places, including the area behind the front wheel wells. Here, you can see where the cops cut away the sheet metal to get at the drugs.

In the movie, the car is a sleek 1970 Lincoln Contin-ental Mark III, but the real car was a more modest 1960 Buick Invicta, apparently a popular model with drug dealers. Accorting to Robin Moore, author of the book on which the movie is based (The French Connection: A True Account of Cops, Narcotics, and International Conspiracy), "the 1960 Buick Invicta had a peculiarity in body construction conducive to the installations of...extraordinary, virtually detection-proof traps concealed within the fenders and undercarriage."

Because the Buick had just over 1,000 miles on its odometer, it was thought that the French bought it expressly for the purpose of drug-smuggling.

The Story of the License Plates

Both the real car and the movie car had European license plates, but they're not identical--the Buick's plate reads 18 LU 75, while the Lincoln's says 18 LU 13. So why the difference?

In France at the time (1961), the last 2 or 3 digits on a license plate reflected where the car was registered. "75" stood for Paris, and "13" represented the Bouches-du-Rhône district of Marseilles. It's possible that the filmmakers made the change for clarity's sake--the French Connection ring was based in Marseilles, not Paris, so they used a Marseilles plate.