Doing Business : Miami Armored-Car Maker Thrives in Violent Colombia : Business is booming for making cars bulletproof and bomb-resistant. There is no shortage of customers.

The climate of violence might discourage many foreign investors from coming here, but it can be an attractive environment for a company like American Security.

The U.S.-based firm armors cars in Colombia, making them bulletproof and even bomb-resistant. The more violent the environment, the better the business for American Security.

“It’s a cyclical business,” David Stone, one of the two owners, said at American Security’s Miami headquarters. “When there is kidnaping or some threat, it activates business.”

In 1989, 789 kidnapings were reported in Colombia. The same year, 23,312 died by homicide, 68 for every 100,000 people and more than double the number five years earlier.

Stone, 40, compared his business with the medical profession, which sometimes thrives on illness.

“It’s just like a doctor,” he said. “A doctor doesn’t get happy when people are dying. We’re just rendering a service.”

Jaime Morales, son of Stone’s Peruvian partner, Julio Morales, is American Security’s vice president in charge of its Colombian plant. His office, on Bogota’s industrial south side, has a window overlooking a cavernous workshop where, on a recent day, eight cars were being fitted with bulletproof panels and glass.

For $35,000, Morales will equip a car with armor that can stop .357 magnum slugs. For $70,000, he will make it impervious to bullets from an automatic assault rifle such as the M-16. And for more money, he will customize the car to resist bomb explosions.

But the protection is not guaranteed against all bombs, Morales says. “It depends on the quantity of explosives. Let’s say we are helping to diminish the risk.”

Morales, 27, is a cheerful man with longish brown hair, cherubic cheeks and a shiny Rolex watch. He tells the company’s story with enthusiasm and pride.

American Security has car-armoring plants in Peru and Venezuela as well as Colombia. Together, the three plants have armored more than 500 cars.

In Peru, American Security turned a pickup truck into a bulletproof “Popemobile” that was used by Pope John Paul II on his 1988 visit to that country. “We have protected the most important man in the world,” Morales boasted.

In Colombia, the company’s clients have included the presidential palace and the U.S. Embassy, which provided 28 armored utility wagons to protect Colombian judges under threat from drug lords.

Delivery of those vehicles was delayed when cocaine traffickers exploded a devastating bus-bomb at the Bogota headquarters of the national investigative police last December. The bomb, which killed 63 people, also wrecked American Security’s nearby plant and 32 vehicles that were being armored.

The company moved to a new plant in south Bogota and finished the judges’ utility wagons last month.

Morales excused himself to take a telephone call from Medellin, Colombia’s most violent city and home of its most notorious cocaine traffickers. When he hung up, he apologized for the interruption and explained, “We have to take a car to Medellin urgently, because there is a person there who was just attacked.”

In addition to “narco-terrorists,” Colombia is beleaguered by leftist guerrillas, right-wing paramilitary squads and gangs of common criminals that specialize in kidnaping and armed robbery.

Athough demand is high for armored vehicles in Colombia, Morales said competition is stiff. When American Security came in 1987, it was the third car-armoring company here; now there are six.

And Colombians are sophisticated customers, he said. “The people here know about armor. I think they are the most demanding clients.”

Most Colombian customers are businessmen. Some have their cars armored because they are potential targets of kidnaping or terrorism, but “there are others who do it for snob appeal,” Morales said.

To have a car armored, he said, a would-be customer must obtain authorization from the army, which investigates the owner and requires him to justify the request.

Morales acknowledged that some cars armored by American Security may have ended up in drug traffickers’ garages, but he said the company has no way of preventing that.

“We are an armoring and not an investigative company,” he said.

Getting goverment authorization for armoring a car can take up to a month or two, and work on the car usually takes about 25 days. But a rush order can be handled in considerably less time.

“For example, the presidency of the (Colombian) republic asked for a Jeep, and we did it in eight days,” Morales said.

When a car is armored, its interior must be dismantled, its window frames modified and its body structure reinforced to carry extra weight. American Security’s standard package includes a back-up battery, automatic bolt-locks for doors and an emergency siren.

The armoring plates, imported from the company’s U.S. headquarters, are a composite of nylon fabric and polymer resins. Stone refused to identify his suppliers, since the material is also used for military purposes.

The bulletproof windows used by American Security consist of laminated layers of glass and polycarbonate plastic. Stone showed a piece, about an inch thick, that had stopped several .357 magnum bullets in a test. The glass and polycarbonate layers on one side were shattered and whitened by the impact, but the other side was intact.

“If it’s not polycarbonate, you have a lot of spalling (chipping) inside the car,” Stone said.

The American, a New York University graduate, is married to a Peruvian woman. His first South American business venture, in 1975, involved selling home smoke detectors. He met the elder Morales in Peru and the two became partners in 1982.

American Security capitalizes on Colombian violence not only by armoring cars but also by selling such U.S. products as telephone scrambling devices, concertina rolls of razor wire and metal detectors. In August, the company plans to begin manufacturing bulletproof vests in its Colombian plant. But the main focus will continue to be armored cars.

Morales predicted growth in the number of cars armored, currently 10 to 12 a month. “It is rising now,” he said. “It could go up to 25 to 30 monthly.”