BODYGUARD ARMORING
ARMORING VEHICLES IN TEXAS SINCE 1990
BODYGUARD ARMORING
San Antonio, TX
ph: 830-624-9996
armoredc
About Us
Wayne Brown, owner of Bodyguard Armoring, is a second generation craftsman. He started as an apprentice at his father's auto custom and collision shop in San Antonio Texas when he was just 14 years old. At the age of 18 as a senior in high school Wayne completely rebuilt his first "Totalled" car at his dad's shop . In 1980 he moved to Austin and opened his own shop repairing and customizing high end import cars.
In 1990, after 10 years of customizing cars in Austin he began building armored vehicles as Bodyguard Armoring at the request of a customer who needed a "Bulletproof" vehicle. Since 1990 Bodyguard armored products, either vehicles, personal armor or architectural armor, have been in use here in the U.S., Mexico, Peru, Colombia, China, Haiti, Uganda, Nigeria, Israel and South Africa.
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Monday, January 05, 2009
This summer, the police department in Maine's largest city loaded an aging assault vehicle onto the back of a flatbed truck and hauled it 2,100 miles to Central Texas. Police officials in Portland had heard about a guy who might be able to get the vehicle working again.
His name is Wayne Brown, and over two-plus decades working in an East Austin garage, he had established a national reputation for turning the Jeeps and BMWs of the wealthy and the worried into armored vehicles. In a 1991 demonstration that made local news, Brown arranged for an Austin police officer to shoot up a Jeep that he had modified for a New York client. Neither a .308 sniper rifle nor an AK-47 fired at close range could penetrate the doors or windows. Later, Brown's work was featured on the Discovery Channel.
"Nothing is bulletproof," Brown said recently, pointing to that Jeep door, which he kept, "but this will stop most rifle bullets."
Brown is now rehabilitating a type of police assault vehicle called a Peacekeeper.
The Peacekeeper was created by the Cadillac-Gage Corp. in the early 1980s for the Air Force, which bought almost 600 of the vehicles. The company basically made the Peacekeeper by cutting away the body of a Dodge Ramcharger truck and replacing it with an armored body. In the late 1980s, the Air Force gave away almost all of them to law enforcement agencies across the country, including the police departments in Austin and Round Rock and the Texas Department of Public Safety.
By the early 2000s, one given to the Killeen Police Department was worn out.
In early 2003, the Killeen Police Department offered an intriguing challenge: Take a brand-new heavy-duty Dodge Ram 4x4 pickup, cut away the body, graft the body of the Peacekeeper onto the Dodge Ram truck chassis and make the whole thing work.
"To the best of our knowledge, this type of conversion has never been attempted or done," Killeen police officials wrote in a 2004 letter to Brown.
Killeen picked it up in September 2003. The department's SWAT team uses it almost daily.
In 2006, Brown did a nearly identical job for the Rochester, Minn., police department.
The U.S. Defense Department lists the replacement cost of a Peacekeeper at about $230,000, but Brown says he can rebuild one for between $110,000 and $140,000.
BODYGUARD ARMORING
San Antonio, TX
ph: 830-624-9996
armoredc
