shot and posted by Owen Smith
Cohort Pic(k) of the Day: Chrysler Grand Town and Country – Room For More Bodies
– Posted on October 10, 2021
shot and posted by Owen Smith
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So, question out of the blue: Do hearses in Canada follow the US style with covered rear windows or the “Commonwealth” style with glass rear?
I’m Canadian and have never seen one with a glass rear.
I took the above picture in Canada, so that should help answer your q!
So it looks like the main vehicle is a pre-2011 T&C, due to the headlamps and side trim, but the tail lights are from a 2011+ post-refresh version. Wonder what the backstory is there.
One of the first things I noticed was the rear bumper area has been reconfigured and shortened. I’m guessing it’s to facilitate getting equipment in and out of the van. I suspect there’s been other modifications to the vehicle to accommodate it’s mission. I actually rather like that rear bumper change, it makes the van look sleek.
That’s fairly dressed-up for a funeral coach, IMO. I think I’d like to be ferried to the other side in a van like that…
One of the local funeral homes around here has a whole brace of these fifth generation vans as first call vehicles. They’re all black with heavily tinted windows and a discreet logo of the funeral home on the slider door window.
What I really want to know is the size, manufacturer and model of those alloy wheels on the coach. It’s not easy finding nice looking aftermarket wheels for the “Toaster” minivans and those look great.
Powered by biodiesel from the ‘auxiliary tank’.
Coachbuilt Chrysler minivan hearses, as opposed to stock ones with at most detachable landau-iron panels, are rare but they exist. This one was used for the funeral of Lee Iacocca (since surely he couldn’t take his final ride in a Caddy, had he ever been in a GM car apart from a competitive ride-and-drive at the proving grounds?)
https://www.gannett-cdn.com/presto/2019/07/10/PDTN/22398296-3371-44b7-b7b5-e196859bdaa7-2019-0710-rb-bu-iacocca-funeral176.jpg?width=660&height=439&format=pjpg&auto=webp
A rear view (small, but the only one I could find) shows a fully coachbuilt rear with the taillights from a 300;
https://www.gannett-cdn.com/presto/2019/07/10/PDTN/2c13ccb6-eca4-40d6-b299-4fcef4de362c-2019-0710-rb-bu-iacocca-funeral166.jpg?width=660&height=455&format=pjpg&auto=webp
Landau vinyl roof and opera lamps, nice, but they really should have put on whitewalls, wire wheel covers, and a Rolls-ish grille for Lee’s last ride…
If Chrysler is going to kill the 300 sedan this could be an affordable way to keep the 300 moniker alive. If they put a porthole window where the landau bar is and threw in those reclining second row seats from Kia, I’d be interested.
That’s neat! I wonder if the same builder is responsible for that and the original post van. Mixing Chrysler minivans with different tail lights and all. Maybe it’s their schtick.
I’m kinda surprised they didn’t have a pair of 1965 Mustangs turned into limousines for the family to ride in! Wasn’t Lee once said to be the “Father of the Ford Mustang”?
There was a cougar sedan from 1977-1979. I’d go with the 1967-1971 suicide door Thunderbird though.
This just goes to show that minivans are always the reasonable choice.
No real comment on the hearse aspect, but I dig the paint colour.
Agreed. Green is an underrated color, and I wish it would come out of hibernation to help bust greyscale square in the chops.
The choice of vehicle and the color make sense given the funeral services company to which is belongs, which is a Green Burial company, specializing in low-cost and low-impact arrangements.
From their website:
A green 10+ year old Chrysler is a good fit for a company with that mission statement.
This reminded me of my mother-in-law visiting us in Chicago when my wife and I first married in 1975. Attached are pictures of two transport vehicles and two disposal sites operated by the City of Chicago. This was my ultimate idea of low cost disposition of remains. Whenever my mother-in-law came from NYC to visit us in Chicago, I would pick her up at O’Hare and drive her by one of these city incinerators on the way home and I warned her if she kicked the bucket on our watch, one of these facilities would be her final destination destination as an intact corpse prior to the bulk waste shredder.
This photo of the White was taken in 1963, when the Department Streets & Sanitation chose orange trucks prior to switching to their now ubiquitous baby blue trucks. Background was the then-new Chicago Southwest Incinerator. Pic. 2 shows a newer Chicago truck and the City’s Northwest Incinerator when new in 1972. My M-i-L was a wonderful, smart woman with a wicked sense of humor, (this was payback) and died a few years later in NJ and was buried next to my father-in-law. But I sure had fun giving her guff when she visited us in Chicago.
Earth’s Option – Your Last-Ride Share.