Happy Halloween: The History of The Hearse

foreign [Music] to celebrate this scary occasion let's have a look at the vehicle we'll all have our very last and inevitable riding the car that carries the vehicular Charon the hearse welcome everyone to a gruesome 41st episode of the Automotive History Series where we're gonna put the fun in funeral cars welcome everyone to the history of the hearse death has been around us as long as we live and man can you write that down in your quotation book wow before cars the diseased had two options to be carried around in the rich would often be transported to the afterlife and richly decorated coaches full of religious symbolism any Gothic or neo-gothic style skulls thorns and torches were applied to these coaches lest we forget the death is all around us and thou shalt live an honest and hardworking life momentumori or if you were not rich and chances are you were you were carried on a beer these were right that carried by hand or on Wheels so pretty much a humble card but even these were eventually replaced by horse-drawn carriages in the 19th century although the beer name currently lives on is that little card they use within funeral homes to carry around the coffin but is no longer related to the hearses and why is it called hers the hearse name comes from the French airs which comes from the Latin word herpax meaning Harrow not exactly the most sexy origin for a word that describes a dignified vehicle the preferred term in the industry is funeral car and not hers the history of the hearse goes hand in hand with the history of the car as soon as the motorized Carriage started to replace the horse and cart so the car entered the funeral Market interestingly enough these early motorized hearses were electric instead of the conventional gas-powered version I think the funeral homes preferred the quietness and ease of operation of electric powered hearses over gas powered Alternatives gas powered cars were still pretty crude in those days lots of vibration and noise it's like standing next to a generator during a ceremony we're here together today to commemorate but in the meantime the regular gas engine was improved and perfected and by the storm of the 1910s the first gas-powered funeral cars were introduced One Source notes that over in the United States the first gas powered hers was bought in 1909 and in the same year the first funeral was being held with a gas-powered hearse by the 1920s regular gas powered hearses had replaced its electric cousin they were more advanced quieter and refined to be suitable enough for funerals although the electric range should not be a problem for a short distance in The Limited trips or hers usually makes in the graveyard Funeral Directors quickly found out that they could make more trips and therefore make more money if they chose the gas powered version you have to understand that generally a hearse is not made by a car maker you cannot buy a Cadillac or Mercedes funeral Carriage like a car dealer and drive it right out of the gate instead the so-called Hearst conversion is done by a third-party company mostly coach Builders as mentioned many car makers do not make a hearse but offer commercial chassis for these companies sometimes a third-party coach Builders do the conversions themselves entirely they take these chassis which are usually the front half of a regular passenger car but with an extended rear platform behind it and then build their own custom body on top of that that accommodates the coffin including the equipment to roll it in and out this also means that these third-party companies do not design the whole car hearses are for the most part exactly the same as the a passenger car that they're based on and follow their design because let's have a look at over A Century of hers design by the 1920s the hers still looked much like the original horse-drawn cars and that's no surprise considering cars in general still look much like the carriages only at the start of the 1930s when the art deco and streamlined movement began the cars got much sleeker and a little highly decorated sub-series of hearses began introduced by the Cyrus kovo conversion company the so-called art carved hearses experienced a short-lived popularity during the 1930s and 1940s take a look at this late 1930s LaSalle seroscovo Damascus Hearst the site features elaborate wooden panels carved by a hand that is a reference to the old style hearse from before the turn of the century like the wooden drapes although beautiful it also looks highly Sinister around the same time the company also introduced another styling gimmick the S Bar Orlando bar even today a classic piece of funeral styling but what is it what does it do well to be frank absolutely nothing the S Bar used to have a function on so-called Landau style vehicles vehicles were the passengers in the rear could open or close the soft top the s the S shape helps with the folding mechanism but on a hearse with a hard metal roof so you're a Scoville went even so far to make the roof out of vinyl to further enhance the convertible look but it's all just for show the S bar later found its way also on passenger cars like the fort Thunderbird Landau for 1962 and became an aftermarket styling gimmick for many American cars in the late 60s and 70s even recently the previous generation Opel Astra station wagon featured a chrome strip that looked much like a Landau bar and you guessed it the car was quickly nicknamed The Hearse in Europe [Music] but I digress by the late 1940s and early 1950s car design shifted away from round and subdued styling to more hard angles and design motives all over the car with plenty of bright work and happy colors a stark contrast with the sedate and understated black design of the coffin carrying part of the hearse it clashes with the rest of the car body and a great example are cars like the 1959 Cadillac hearse which almost turns into a Frankenstein car somehow the massive fins go from futuristic Space Age to Old World neo-gothic style in the blink of an eye and what about this 1960 Buick they had to cut most of the rear end styling in order to make it fit not the greatest execution but what can you do there wasn't a lot of communication between conversion companies and car makers around this time in the USA there were only a few companies that do their own hearse conversions and have their own approach in terms of styling take a look for 1960 some four companies provided their version of a hearse design based on a Cadillac the Eureka company offered a hearse with roof part and the window Styles mimic that of the original Cadillac design the roof isn't even all that tall and mostly consist of vinyl with no windows for a privacy look the Lando bar gracefully follows the sloping side windows hessen eisenhart offer a similar design but when for a more formal approach with the last side window cut off in an angular way Miller meteor offers a two-tone color combination and a slightly taller roof with what seems to be colored rear quarter panels or Windows Superior coach goes all out with a more space 8 design the lendau S is even more present with a black Lando style roof that falls like a canopy over the white roof which I guess is stainless steel interesting to note is the massive reverse Panorama windshield which you would also find on earlier 50s cars and the extra bright work especially companies like Miller meteor did not only offer hearses but plenty of other commercial vehicles that required the same body style setup take a hearse painted red and white and it's an ambulance take a hearse remove the roof part and it becomes something like a pickup but in fact there's a flower car also used for the more elaborate funerals take a regular passenger car and extend it and it becomes a limousine not the luxury kind but the it fits a lot of people kind once again usually for large funeral processions around the 1960s until the 1980s the hearse reached its peak popularity morbidly enough the carvin's gruesome image became such an icon it ended the public media usually for a scary or comedic effect like The Munsters an American sitcom that ran in the mid-60s where the characters drove hot rods that were modified hearses and had a lot of funeral references in their design or what about ecto-1 a 1959 Cadillac Miller meteor ambulance outfitted to hunt for ghosts I know it's an ambulance but painted black and you got the same thing fast forward to the 1970s and many hearses retained their formal and classical styling which perfectly matches the squarish design of many cars and almost like an accident many of the big waterfall grills unintentionally looked like shiny gravestones in the 1980s some companies look further than just car-based coffin carriers in 1981 Caravan maker Airstream introduced a motorhome converted for funeral purposes the funeral coach and to be fair what's not to like it's a space and fuel saving measure instead of spreading the family across multiple funeral limousines why not keep them in one vehicle there is plenty of space for the stiff one at the back and the whole family can get together to mourn in the motorhome while the driver rides it to the cemetery in the meantime over in Japan a very unusual and specific sub-series of hearses started to emerge before that families usually didn't have a lot of money to spend on funerals but with a rising middle class also the need for more elaborate funerals started to rise as well fearing modernity of new car based hearses the Japanese look back to traditional times and wanted a Buddhist style Temple or shrine-like structure on the rear end of large American cars this results in cars that actually carry around an Asian temple on their back there are several flavors in their design and this trend started in the 1980s but as of today it is gradually declining and moving back to Conventional hearses and as much as you would laugh at these conversions it is effectively the same as the wood carved drapes or s-bar on the side as we know it let's move on to the present day because the funeral car business is rather slow to react to design changes that are rapidly introduced by the car industry the formal and sedate styling of the hearse benefits greatly if the car it is based on also looks traditional and conservative with an emphasis on straight lines now most luxury car makers like Cadillac and Mercedes look much like this in the 1990s and the 2000s but even today these companies move away from the old-fashioned styling and add increasing amounts of creases and angles which can conflict with the vinyl roof in Windows Style a Russian auras Lafayette Hearst looks commanding and very much in tune with the theme but these days there are so many flavors when it comes to verses as soon as you choose a more sporty car as a hearse you can really see the former roof doesn't match with curvace's body and lead to odd styling with unusually tall roofs and extremely long rare overhang also not every car is suitable for converting it into a hearse there are even hearses based on minis out there but only for one very sad reason it's for deceased children adults understandably do not fit but let's wrap this up on a lighter note whether you like it or not the hearse is here to stay or as we say in Dutch once someone is dead it's someone else's bread as long as people keep dying the hearse will stay alive but the hearse drives further than just the gate at the cemetery it is also found its way into car culture maybe it's to ridicule the Grim reality that is death like making all kinds of crazy Custom Creations out of it but maybe it's also closely related to General subcultures like Goths that take the car from a death loving aspect than from a car loving aspect anyway with a bit of luck you can spot a hers or two at a car show there is something eerily fascinating about hearses I live right next to a church and uh let's just say it's a hobby of mine to walk up to the window and take a picture of a hearse I mean I respected that but come on there's a hearse based on American car right in front of your house what are you gonna do it's the only time I get to see a modern day Cadillac over here I'd like to end this episode on a more personal note when my time has come and I'll be laid down under the sheet of the old oak tree I'd like to be carried around in one of these a classic Cadillac hearse from the 1950s it's a Last Wish of mine now I'm currently 25 years old considering my current lifestyle let's be generous and let's say I'll make it to 75. that's 50 years from now by the time this Classic Cadillac will be 120 years old and that's a lot think about it how often do you see a 120 year old hers driving around these days I will probably have to come to terms that I'd like to be carried around in a Cadillac but one from what we currently call the present day not as exciting or stylish but what can you do by the time I'm wearing my wooden coat the Cadillac will be 50 years old my grandchildren will point at it and say that's a nice old car oh how time moves on happy Halloween everyone [Music] [Laughter]

Channel: Ed's Auto Reviews

Views: 317,028

Keywords: Automotive, History, Automotive History, Auto Reviews, Ed's Auto Reviews, Car Design, Design History, Hearse, Funeral, Funeral Car, Coffin

Id: REQJm0CXwiQ

Length: 14min 24sec (864 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 30 2022