Trump’s First Name Licensing Deal

Over the years, Donald Trump has slapped his name on a weird variety of places and things: hotels, golf resorts, casinos, menswear, vodka, steaks, and a university that functioned like a fancy mugger. His very first name...

...licensing deal, though, was with the Cadillac division of General Motors for the Trump Golden Series and Trump Executive Series limousines. These were to be finished for market by Dillinger Coach Works, a New York firm run by convicted felons Jack Schwartz and John Staluppi.

Trump got Cadillac to agree to the deal by ordering a run of the things he never actually bought, but they were designed and prototypes made and unveiled at a 1988 Atlantic City trade show. The Trump limos, largely unchanged Cadillac Broughams modified by Dillinger, were about...

...what you’d expect: gaudy, brand-inflating boomer pimpmobiles decked out with cathode ray TVs, wood bars, wool carpet and paper shredders. Chrome sections were inserted between the B and C pillars, most visible surfaces adorned with nasty ‘Cadillac Trump’ crests.

This was 1988, the year Trump lost his mind in a frantic splurge of cross-eyed business failures, cheated on his wife of three kids, and feuded with Merv Griffin for ownership of the comically massive Taj Mahal, his third casino in Atlantic City. The limos, then, were a blip...

...in a bad year, but what is notable, as is often the case with Trump, is the connections behind the project. Dillinger’s John Staluppi, automotive magnate and proprietor of Florida’s Cars Of Dreams Museum, is a 72-year-old Brooklynite and former suspected associate of the...

...Colombo crime family worth $400 million. Most articles about him focus on his hundred-plus past and present business enterprises, car dealerships or yacht manufacturing, but Staluppi was well-known to federal law enforcement for his closeness to long-time Colombo...

...boss Carmine Persico. Staluppi got his start in business running a Sunoco gas station after receiving a loan from his father. Soon he had a few gas stations and a bunch of Honda dealerships but wound up pleading guilty to a charge of running stolen car parts in '72.

Staluppi:

By 1984 he was under investigation via a Division of Gaming Enforcement probe into Jack Schwartz (who wanted his auto leasing business licensed as a casino vendor), the co-owner of Dillinger Coach Works with whom he’d later tool up Trump’s Caddies.

By about 1986, Staluppi was enjoying a lush line of gambling credit courtesy of the Trump Plaza, a casino made of price-inflated mob mud supplied by the Gambino syndicate and Genovese family, leaders of which had been represented by Trump’s mentor and lawyer Roy Cohn.

The Gambinos and the Genovese family owned S & A Concrete, which also sold Donald the walls of Trump Tower. By 1993, Staluppi had grabbed over $200,000 in free chips and other services from Trump and, by 1988, when Trump’s limousine deal was coming to ‘fruition’, Colombo...

...captain and FBI informant Greg Scarpa was telling the FBI Staluppi was a full-on member of the mob. In the late 1980s Trump and Staluppi were close enough to hang out on each other’s boats, and Staluppi’s helicopter charter service would fly high rollers to Atlantic City...

...for Trump and other casino licensees, presumably a discrete way of moving certain interesting characters in and out of the same Trump properties that subsidized his own gambling. As an aside, one further associate of Trump’s was Joseph Weischelbaum, another chopper service...

...man and major drug runner who set Trump up with pilots for his own personal Puma. Wesichelbaum, despite Trump writing the district court that he was ‘conscientious, forthright, and diligent’, went down for three years, during which time his girlfriend purchased adjoining...

...apartments 49-A and 49-B in Trump Tower for $2,350,000 total. Back to Staluppi, in 1991 New Jersey casino regulators had linked him to Trump by copying his phone book, which also boasted the numbers of key Colombo captains.

His partner Schwartz’s, nabbed by the DGE in 1984, contained names of Gambino and Luchese family members, an indication that both Dillinger Coach boys, like Roy Cohn and Trump himself, were friendly with individuals from a few extralegal organizations in the New York area.

DCW (full name Dillinger-Gaines Coach Works) itself went out of business in 1990, having at one point employed up to 250 people. As to why Trump didn’t pay for a full run of Trump Cadillacs… Perhaps it was the stock market mini-crash of 1987, which depressed demand for luxury...

...vehicles, or perhaps the whole affair was a branding stunt, another fig leaf and more distracting glitz to cover for a river of dirty money flowing through Trump’s gambling joints. Either way, the Golden Series prototype was purchased by Trump himself before finding its way...

... to the Volo Auto Museum in Illinois. The Executive prototype is in the UK.