When the Panther’s rugged frame and proven mechanicals don’t convey the necessary prestige for your funeral home, one option is to hack on a Chrysler 300’s front end, fenders and lower door skins. That path, taken for this conversion, almost looks natural and SoCalMetro, who caught this and last week’s Epsilon Malibu hearse, speculated the Chrysler LX chassis was the basis for this car. Yet as we see, the tumblehome and windshield match those of the big Ford. After all, convincingly modifying the upper half of a car would be nearly impossible. Still, an honest effort was made to emulate the Chrysler as much as possible, with its side mirrors looking right at home in the Ford’s window frames. Someone clearly loved the previous 300 enough to have this done, even though the real thing was out of reach. What’s Spanish for, “When there’s a will, there’s a way?”
The front clip has a sort of saggy-jowls look, suggesting one of the areas where the Chrysler front “didn’t quite fit.”
I noticed that too; it seems like an easy avoided fit issue, too. A spacer between the fascia’s lower end and its mounting point would solve the saggy jowls look, but perhaps there would be a lot of bottoming out.
The whole front end looks like it’s got a slight slope to it as well, the cutline between the fender/bumper cover is at an angle. This must have been done on purpose to clear the internals of the Panther’s longer overhang but it really gives some nasty side effects, the headlights namely, which no longer line up with the bodywork since the light beam would be off kilter otherwise
Nice that someone loves the 300 enough to do this… but still very hard to understand. If you’re going to do something mildly crazy like that, why not put on a Cadillac schnozz?
…or a Bentley Flying Spur.
Actually I think it is a Chrysler hearse. With the death of the panther cars, there is a market for RWD hearses. Companies like Quality Coachwork of Ontario Cali and other companies are converting 300’s into funeral cars.
The one in your video is a Chrysler, but the white one Perry posted is most definitely not. Look at the doors on the white one versus yours . Completely different, the white one looks to have doors from Crown Vic/Grand Marquis, and the proportions of the front end are all off, definitely Panther and not Chrysler 300.
It looks FoMoCo from the waist up though…
Either way I would haunt my relatives if they hauled my corpse in that bastard of a vehicle
Errr… Why? There’s a 300 limo running around in Vienna made out to look like a Rolls-Royce (not that anyone who knows half a thing about cars would be fooled) which to me is stupid enough, but that is just taking the biscuit.
I’m puzzled here too. Wouldn’t it have been easier to actually make a 300 hearse as opposed to all the custom work that would have gone into this to make everything fit? I mean the LX platform is RWD and based (if I’m not mistaken) on the W210 Benz platform, so it’d certainly be up to the task of casket haulage. Sure, where there’s a will there’s a way, no question. But the pertinent w- question is *why*?
Seems like a lot of fuss just to give you a classier (maybe) dry of wheels to get to the boneyard. More fuss than I want.
Dear god! Just cremate me and mail me to the cemetery.
I’d haunt my family if they brought me to the cemetery in this. Even in death this wouldn’t fool me!
I’ve yet to hear a family complain about the hearse being used. They expect a Cadillac or a Lincoln, and probably wouldn’t mind a 300 at all. However, if it was already a Town Car, its pretty silly to go through the trouble to make it look like a 300, which would be a bit of a step down, IMO, as Chrysler just doesn’t have the luxury chachet that Lincoln still has.
It is not about the status for me. The damn thing is just ugly.
It is ugly. A stretched 300 would be fine, a bastard creation with a 300 front clip drafted on looks horrid.
The Chrysler displayed has headlights that look like thick-lens eyeglasses.
That’s just tragic… the car, that is. But the death too 🙂
Surely this was an older Lincoln hearse that has been ‘updated’ for a more modern look?
Good idea but the math doesn’t work. The oldest the Lincoln section could be is 2003, as that was the first year for the extended rear doors on the LWB version (itself only available after 2000 but the stretch was in between the doors until ’03). If you look at the distance between the window divider and the back of the window in the rear doors, it has to be an LWB car. This generation of Chrysler, on the other hand, ran 2005 to 2010. So that’s way too much work to make a car no older than 2003 look like a 2005 or even a 2010 model! Especially considering that the TC didn’t change much from ’03 to its cancellation in ’11 so it would have still been current.
The only way these cars make sense is if they’re the result of a very creative chop-shop’s labor.
This photo was taken in Mexico. Lots of chop shops, there!
My father used to brag about picking up from the hospital my new born sister and our mom in a hearse!