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Vintage Hearses, Funeral Coaches and Flower Cars On Main Street Anywhere: A Pictorial


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12 hours ago, f.f.jones said:

hearse 1919-hearse-49430.jpg

il_794xN.2890029811_q200.jpg

 

These two have very similar decoration. Any idea who and where the builder was?

The carved panel hearses were produced by almost all hearse coachbuilders.   It was a style carried forward from the horse-drawn hearse, the wood panels machine carved from master patterns with same technology used in Victorian-style furniture manufacture.  Later, the carved panels were casted in zinc-alloy and anodized, bolted together in sections.      

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On 3/30/2013 at 12:06 PM, Dave Gelinas (XP-300) said:

Here's a wild one.

post-58764-143141821111_thumb.jpg

Got sucked into looking through this entire thread. I saw this and had to laugh. These are built in my town. One of my good friends, who is a funeral director, got tired of having to buy a new hearse every time Cadillac changed body styles. He'd met a guy, Max Prinzing, that built these pseudo-30's hearses. He bought one, and the first funeral he used it for was like a superstar funeral. I escorted it (as a police officer) to the graveyard and people were lined up to photo the thing. Had an LS engine in it and would smoke the Coker bias plies. He wound up buying Prinzing out, and now has a small factory building these. Kinda cool. Not a classic by any stretch, but definitely cooler than modern rides. And for those that think he's not a real car guy, building these replicas- he has a model T hearse, a Packard Henney, and several other classics and hotrods. His delivery truck is a modified La France fire truck.

 Welcome to Rosewood Classic Coach | Rosewood Classic Coach

 

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2 hours ago, Joe in Canada said:

41 Cadillac for sale. I do not think it is a 41 seeing it would have been war time. 

 https://www.facebook.com/commerce/listing/485458379519389/?media_id=0&ref=share_attachment

 

It really is a '41. War time restrictions didn't come into effect until about February 1942. I found a few '42 hearses on Google but none were worth posting.

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On 3/29/2013 at 12:47 PM, Hudsy Wudsy said:

I came across these two quite classy looking last rides on the "Just a Car Guy" blog. Their moderate gothic ornamentation makes them relatively tasteful.

Just a Car Guy: gothic hearses

tumblr_lp9gaf0eQP1qinw11o1_1280.jpg

tumblr_lp9g73TQfX1qinw11o1_1280.jpg

I hadn't until now gone through this entire thread. It's nice to see back on page two, the photo of Needham's (London, Ontario) 1941 Cadillac hearse, top. The body on this unit started as a '41 coupe. As it was Needham's first hearse, old car enthusiast and second generation funeral home owner Lloyd Needham searched for the long lost car. It was found in derelict condition in a collapsed barn. RM Restorations was given the task of recreating the hearse, starting with a restored coupe just as originally. They apparently even sent an employee to wood carving classes so he could make the carved sides. It's still owned (and occasionally used) by Needham's.

Edited by J.H.Boland (see edit history)
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25 minutes ago, J.H.Boland said:

I hadn't until now gone through this entire thread. It's nice to see back on page two, the photo of Needham's (London, Ontario) 1941 Cadillac hearse, top. The body on this unit started as a '41 coupe. As I recall the story, the coachwork was done by The Ingersoll Casket Company. As it was Needham's first hearse, old car enthusiast and second generation funeral home owner Lloyd Needham searched for the long lost car. It was found in derelict condition in a collapsed barn. RM Restorations was given the task of recreating the hearse, starting with a restored coupe just as originally. They apparently even sent an employee to wood carving classes so he could make the carved sides. It's still owned (and occasionally used) by Needham's.

Here's the story on that one:

 

https://www.oldcarsweekly.com/news/little-business-big-cars

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7 hours ago, Joe in Canada said:

41 Cadillac for sale. I do not think it is a 41 seeing it would have been war time. 

 https://www.facebook.com/commerce/listing/485458379519389/?media_id=0&ref=share_attachment

The siren under the hood and the possibility that those are red running lights, and not amber, make me think that this was probably a dual-purpose unit.

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I have a friend whose family owned the local funeral home in a very very rural county in Ky (most of them are very rural). 
As a young man in the late 50’s early 60’s he got to drive the hearse on ambulance runs as the nearest one was forty or fifty miles away. They had more ambulance calls than funerals. 
dave s 

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I just noticed this thread and read it again from the start. It is a shame that a lot of the old photo links died as a result of one of the forum updates since the thread started. Earlier I posted some photos that I took in 2007 of an unusual Model T Ford Carved panel hearse owned by McKenzie Funeral Home in Whiteville NC. It was one of two early McKenzie hearses that were pulled out a downtown storage building in the early 1980s. The Ford was transported to the current McKenzie's location in the 1980s and I never knew what happened to the other. It is quite timely that I just found this old discussion, since a McKenzie family member posted photos of the "missing" hearse on facebook a couple of days ago. He identified it as a 1926 Dodge. Apparently, it was put in another storage building when the two hearses were removed from the old storage location in the 1980s. They have now retrieved it and stored it in the old garage at the current funeral home along with the Ford. Apparently the Ford is still not running. They pulled it out and put the Dodge in the back and parked the Ford in front of it. Hopefully that they have the two reunited at the funeral home, they might be getting ready to make an effort to get them back on the road. 

Mckenzie 1913 Ford 3.jpg

McKenzie 1926 Dodge and 1913 Ford 2.jpg

Mckenzie 1913 Ford 2.jpg

Mckenzie 1913 Ford 1.jpg

Mckenzie 1926 Dodge 4.jpg

Mckenzie 1926 Dodge 3.jpg

Mckenzie 1926 Dodge 2.jpg

Mckenzie 1926 Dodge 1.jpg

McKenzie 1926 Dodge and 1913 Ford.jpg

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The 1913 Ford and 1926 Dodge that I posted about recently were the subject of a newspaper article that might be of interest to those reading this discussion: https://nrcolumbus.com/antique-funeral-coaches-trace-history-of-one-of-whitevilles-oldest-businesses/?fbclid=IwAR3hLX-CI1Tvz_Dcv0pHBuBUrxj3YDwIdVFa3RxL14-ENlL2j25rUTVLSI0

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