Come on, it’s Halloween, and time for something a bit different! When other than today is it more appropriate to show a classic hearse on CC? Besides, you all know my jones for B-body Pontiacs, and this one might well be the rarest Pontiac B I’ve ever stumbled across.
A Pontiac hearse? Yes. They’re not seen nearly as frequently as the ubiquitous black Cadillac hearse, but like Cadillac, Pontiac did indeed offer a commercial chassis, as Jason wrote about not too long ago. I really am unsure as to when Pontiac last offered an “official” commercial chassis, but companies like Superior, Sayers and Scovill (S&S), Eureka and Cotner-Bevington had enough experience with what was essentially custom coach building that they could probably fabricate what GM didn’t offer.
We have seen a B-body Buick hearse on CC (here), and hearses built on the Electra/LeSabre chassis are far more common than the Parisienne-based variety. What I really like is how the sedan’s rocker trim, fender skirts, and even the rear bumper and taillights have all been neatly integrated into the coachwork. It would have been so easy to use the wagon bits, given its parts commonality across all GM lines (save taillight lenses and badging), instead.
Rather than rehash the helpful info on the sign that accompanied the Pontiac, I am reproducing it here; do click on it for easier reading. As you can see, there’s a reason this is the first Parisienne hearse I’ve seen in the metal: only 38 were built for 1985! I imagine a similar number were ordered in ’86, the Parisienne’s last year.
Inside was a nice maroon interior, which went well with the white paint and black top. Judging from the seats, it started as a standard Parisienne sedan, as the Brougham model had much plusher, button-tufted seating.
You can also see how much of the Caprice was used for these final body-on-frame Pontiacs; the only things different on the dash are the instrument cluster, steering wheel, the badge over the glove box and (I think) the style of fake wood. But the seats were all Pontiac.
Someone in the Iowa City area has a real fondness for old hearses–a month earlier he had a whale Caprice hearse, in silver. That was pretty interesting, but I liked the Pontiac ever so much better.
Happy Halloween, everybody!
Happy Halloween! 😉
This car is so funereal yet you’ve added such whimsy!
Sorry, I had to say that. 🙂
I bet Tom was just dying to take a ride in it!
(ba-dum!)
So here’s the question, 305 SBC V8 power or 307 Oldsmobile with Quadrajet? I assume the Pontiac 301 V8 was out of production by 1985. (I couldn’t find any engine info posted on the “data sheet” you snapped a picture of.)
You made me curious, so I looked it up.
The EPA’s fueleconomy.gov site lists the engine descriptor as “GM-CHEV/Engine produced by GM-Chevrolet Motor Division.”
oldcarbrochures.com doesn’t have a 1985 brochure, but the 1984 brochure also states that the 5.0 liter V8 is a 305 cubic-inch Chevy engine.
According to Wikipedia (which doesn’t cite its sources), “the (Pontiac) 301 has the distinction of being the last true Pontiac V-8 engine, as Pontiac ceased production of these engines effective April 1, 1981.”
If I were a betting man, I’d put my money on it being a Chevy engine, particularly since the Parisienne was such a rush job to put an existing Canadian-market, Oshawa-built, full-size sedan into the U.S. market. I don’t know that Oshawa ever installed any gasoline V8s into post-1977 B-bodies that were not produced by Chevy.
1985 would be SBC 305. During the 1986 run they switched over to the Olds 307’s when they changed over to the same factory making wagons which also got the Olds mill.
Honestly having experienced both I’ve found the 305 to have better drive-ability than the 307, power was more linear from the SBC.
The switch in 1986 from 305 to 307’s was ‘only’ for the Chev and Pontiac wagons. Sedans still used 305’s only. All 1983-86 Parisienne sedans (1982-86 in Canada) used 305 Chev’s exclusively (excluding the V6 optioned cars, obviously).
I agree that the 305 was a much better engine in these cars than the 307. I too have owned both. The 307 had strong bottom end torque, but a very narrow power band, whereas the 305 still had ‘some’ life to it above 1500 RPM.
@ TK. “What I really like is how the sedan’s rocker trim, fender skirts, and even the rear bumper and taillights have all been neatly integrated into the coachwork. It would have been so easy to use the wagon bits, given its parts commonality across all GM lines (save taillight lenses and badging), instead.”
Once again I’m throwing the BS penalty flag on you. How do you know this didn’t start out as a wagon? What sense does it make NOT to use the wagon as the basis for all of this creative coachwork? Here’s a simple fact that seems to escape the editors of CC. A B-Body wagon has a wider rear track. Well maybe that is the wrong way to describe it. I should say they have a wider breath between the frame rails. The lower control arms sit out on the axle more than they do on the sedan/coupes. In other words there is more room out in back on a wagon chassis, which means that any body work mounted to that frame has more utility and usable room to it. It looks like this coach was made in the traditional Cadillac method( ain’t no Caddy wagons). Take a wagon with the SEO B9Q hearse conversion package and hang whatever sheetmetal you want to on it.
Now to answer Dans question. I don’t know either. Like I’ve said on plenty of the posts here “Why doesn’t anybody write down the VINs from these curiosities?”.
It would be too easy I’m thinking. You, or should I say I could tell you a lot of things from looking at those 17 magic digits if somebody would just bother to get the damn VIN. And it doesn’t make a difference, who on the face of this planet built the car! GM,Ford or Wartburg. Bring it on!
I think they he was referring more to the use of the sedan taillights, usually the Oldsmobile and Buick hearses of the same era used the standard wagon taillights, but this uses the sedan, which is curious.
Back when I was posting about my school districts auction a few years back I wrote down VINS to check if the story on the “auction list” matched what I was seeing in person. The scariest thing was a 1987 Caprice whose VIN would come up on all the free VIN websites as “Chevy Caprice” and then the site would claim that NONE of the other trim/option details could be retrieved!
Lt Bruno,
How do you know it didn’t start out as a sedan? Short of taking out the interior, looking at welds, or talking to someone who worked at Eureka in the ’80s, your guess is as good as mine. I certainly make no claims to being an expert on professional cars.
Sure, it could be a wagon, but honestly I don’t see how it could be much easier using a sedan vs. a wagon. It still has a stretched wheelbase, modified roof (commercial glass model) and likely some serious chassis changes.
And maybe some of us don’t give a flip about writing down VINs. Maybe some of us just enjoy shooting cool cars at shows, having a nice dinner afterwards and then writing a post about it. Lighten up.
Stachel: Chill out and take your meds. Every time you came charging in here all worked up over nothing, you usually step on your own member in the process, thanks to your inability to read and comprehend properly.
He NEVER said that it started out as a sedan. Here’s what he said:
What I really like is how the sedan’s rocker trim, fender skirts, and even the rear bumper and taillights have all been neatly integrated into the coachwork. It would have been so easy to use the wagon bits, given its parts commonality across all GM lines (save taillight lenses and badging), instead.
Read it slowly and carefully. Is that not a perfectly accurate statement? It does use the sedan’s rocker trim, fender skirts, rear bumper and taillights, right? So who are you throwing the BS penalty flag at?
For what its worth, this may very well have started out as a sedan. Given the use of certain sedan parts, it certainly suggests that to me. But it’s conjecture. Or is that too complicated of a word for you?
Meanwhile, you own comment makes no sense. What is this supposed to mean? It looks like this coach was made in the traditional Cadillac method( ain’t no Caddy wagons).
Right, since there were no Caddy wagons, what did they make hearses from? That leaves sedans. So why not the Parisienne?
Anyway, who really cares what it was made from?
I’m warning you: stop charging in here foaming at the mouth and all worked up over nothing. It’s not welcome. Go sit in the corner with your favorite Iron Duke engine for 30 minutes; if not forever.
B-body wagons have a wider rear frame section. This creates a significantly wider rear axle than the sedans, and it cause the lower control arm mounts to be further apart. This is why wagons cannot used a sedan sway bar. B-bodies mount the rear sway bay on the lower control arms. The extra width can actually be seen in the rear doors of a wagon. They look identical to a sedan, but in fact they are not. If you look at the top edge of the door where the window meets the door, you can actually see the door flares out and gets wider as it goes towards the rear of the car.
This Parisienne made by Eureka is likely based on a sedan. It uses the sedan specific quarter panels, tail lights, rear bumper and trim. It would be more complicated to graft that into a wagon body (for example the rear bumper would have to be sectioned, and rechromed to fit the wider wagon rear chassis). It appears Eureka simply cut and stretched the car, raised the roof to install “commercial glass” and modified the rear to accept a hearse door.
Eureka replaced this Pontiac Chieftain with a Caprice variant in 1987, called the Caprice Régance. It too appears to be based on a stretched sedan chassis, and uses sedan quarter panels, taillights and bumper. Eureka also made other sedan based hearses during this time, such as Buick Premier Landau, based on a FWD Buick C-body. In fact according to my literature on professional cars Eureka built their hearse “with the limousine style cut-and-stretch method as opposed to the long wheel-based commercial chassis used by other firms” Looking at many of the Eureka coaches from the late 70’s and 80’s it appears most are sedan based. Companies that used wagons as the base, clearly had wagon bodies (bumpers, quarters, tail lights, etc).
The flags on the hood make it look like it’s for a head of state. Hearses kinda creep me out in general, but the tall proportioned ones like this are even more eerie.
Happy Halloween Everyone! Hopefully in another week my busy schedule will allow me to do some CCs!
The magic of the exclusive “commercial glass” which lends the Popemobile/Prez Limo look to hearses and limos that have that option, its mostly disappeared from the hearse option books now, but back in the day, the it was the choice for funeral directors in the know.
Now there’s a hearse of a different color. Sorry.
You found a rare one. None of these is around in great numbers, but these have to be almost extinct, given the low number that started out.
I had never paid attention to the Chevrolet dash in these Parisiennes.. I can’t really say why, but where the earlier Pontiac B body Bonneville was one of my favorite B bodies, the Parisienne may have been my least fave. I just never could drum up any interest over these. Today may have been the first day that I ever typed the name “Parisienne”. Even botched up the spelling before I checked it. If you are going to have a Chevy, well then, have a Chevy. Could this have been the start of the Pontiac Death Watch? 🙂
At least Pontiac reverted to the pre-1982 rear styling in 1985 and 1986, which mitigated some of the effect of the Parisienne looking like a Caprice in drag.
Since Parisienne was the name that GM Canada used for Chevrolets that had Pontiac front clips, it seems quite appropriate to me that the Parisienne should look like a Caprice in drag.
Its the ghost of broughams past waaaahaaaahaaa!!! Spooktacular!!!! I sort of disagree about Pontiac’s demise starting in the 1980’s, they had a Fiero which was a breath of fresh air in the looks department and a new Firebird. Nay the specter of Pontiac’s death was the mid 1990’s
Anyway was this the correct paint job? it seems a bit cheery in white. I never knew Pontiac made hearses that late in time. But of course Pontiac was always a dark hearse in the hearse game anyway. They seem to resurrected a long dead name in the USA(the Chieftain)
It was Eureka (the coachbuilder) that used the “Chieftain” model name on this vehicle. Pontiac last used it in 1958.
Man: I’m having a problem with my Hearse
Mechanic: What is it?
Man: It runs for awhile, then dies
Mechanic: ?
… I’ll show myself out
Is the box on the dash one of those flashers that causes traffic lights to turn green?
I love it! would be perfect for me, I absolutely adore my 86 Pari, but lately i have been missing my astro cargo/party van, this would be the best of both worlds. I would bet its a 305 / q’jet… 85-86 parisiennes were made in Fairfax Kansas also, i believe oshawa line was closed before the end of 86 Production. my 86 is canadian market , but US built.
I’m not familiar with the actual conversion process involved in creating a hearse from a car that was not originally a wagon, but how difficult would it be to refit a rear seat into one of these things? I know you’d no longer be able to lug around a coffin, but I’ve always been morbidly fascinated by hearses and would love to own one someday. A back seat would just make it so much more, well, practical.
An old buddy of mine played in a surf/psychobilly band called The Ghastly Ones. They used to haul their gear in a 60’s Pontiac Bonneville-based hearse. They rearranged the letters on the side to read “Boneville”
I can just hear the “Ghostbusters” theme song in the background…
This one looks well integrated and has clean lines for a commercial car conversion. Nice.
Superior Coach was always proud to announce that GM allowed them to put the Cadillac logos on parts that had been modified by Superior. If your work was not up to snuff then GM would not allow that. I don’t know what Eureka’s standing was back in the day.
I wonder how much money an undertaker saved by going with a Pontiac (or Buick) instead of a Cadillac. My understanding (which is VERY limited) is that the hearse conversion is quite pricey, so I would think that the the price of donor car isn’t a huge consideration.
I know that hearses creep out a lot of folks, but if the used-hearse market offered an easy kit or service to re-install a back seat, I bet a lot of people (me included!) would line up to buy them.
You raise an interesting question about the cost of a Pontiac vs. Cadillac hearse. It reminds me of a personal experience.
My grandmother passed away during a rare, 2′ – 3′ snow blizzard week in Maryland. The funeral home wanted to delay the services and burial for a couple of days until things were cleaned up. My grandfather preferred moving ahead without regard to the weather.
On the day of the burial the funeral home used a 15 year old, green, Pontiac hearse to do the duties. I’d never seen one before. It has always been my assumption that this fine old machine was pressed into service due to the terrible, unplowed roads and the funeral home staff not wanting to risk one of the new Cadillacs.
The Pontiac did a fine job.
The sub-Cadillac choices used to be the cheaper options, but I imagine as the labor cost to make the hearse increased, the difference between the prices of non-Cadillac hearses probably closed up, though many hearse makers still offered a non-Cadillac option until the 90’s, when B-body Roadmaster based hearses were still available for those who chose to shun the Fleetwood based hearse. I remember seeing some funeral homes that used to have a Cadillac hearse and a Buick or Oldsmobile hearse as a back up.
Cool, theres a B body Chev doing hearse duty here but its a wagon not coach built.
I really like the gauge cluster. Not sure if I’ve seen the four pods like that in one of these before but I really like how it looks.
Really nice looking hearse. Very well cared for.
I just ran across this site and funeral coach.To answer some questions. Yes it has a 305 chevy engine. It started out as a sedan, that the body was cut off, and stretched. The roof, sides and rear quarters are a one piece fiberglass shell. These were only built by Eureka in 1985 and 38 built (this is the 3rd one), and in 1986 and 73 were built.
The thing on the dash does not turn the lights green, it is a violet funeral procession light. The Chevy mentioned a month before was a 1995 Superior Chancellor. Other months there were other coaches from my collection.
To the person that mentioned putting rear seats in, why would you want to ruin a rare collector cars value by doing that. Too many of these have been ruined already. You want seats, buy a station wagon.
John, thanks for the information on your car. I love Parisiennes and the Chieftan was very neat to see. I usually attend the Classy Chassy cruise nights every month. Maybe I’ll get to meet you one of these days!
Thanks, I just took it to the one last week. I try to attend, and I rotate my coaches around so don’t know what I will have next time (unless it falls on June 20-23 I will be elsewhere). Feel free to stop and ask questions if you have any, Im usually very close to the car.
Can I ask you a question. Via email ?
Hello there. My name is Emma, and I’ve been meaning to contact you for some time now. You see, I own the last 1985 Pontiac Parisienne coach ever produced, and have restored her to about 80% orginal, with some little personal touches. I have been on the lookout for the other 37 ever since I got her, so to see one of the other ladies living on is so wonderful. I was wondering if you happened to know of the whereabouts of any others, so far in my question I have only located you and one more in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, near where I live. If you have any information or would just like to talk coaches with me, please contact me at EmmaC941@Gmail.com. Thank you so much, I look forward to hopefully talking to you in the future!
I know there are several still out there, I know the location of a couple. Im pretty sure Ive talked to you on facebook about yours. Mine is currently for sale until I come to my senses (I want something different and my garage only holds 4 hearses so one has to go). $5,000 takes it.
I have the chance to buy a 1985 Pont Paris. I understand it’s one of 35 built in 1985? Rough shape but all original. The interior is shot and the top also needs to be replaced. It’s that burg color. Anyone know what its worth? It runs and drives well. Thanks