- Hearses. (spooky music)
We don't really think about them until we have to.
They're weird, oddly specific vehicles used for one purpose.
Transporting the dead. (wolf howls)
Name another vehicle that's only for dead people.
Why do we need them?
Why don't we just use a fancy pickup truck?
Today we're gonna look at the history,
or rather the hearse-story, of these vehicles,
and how they've evolved from horse-drawn carriages
to the six-figure luxury chariots of today.
We're gonna take a look at the world's fastest hearse,
how a JDM hearse differs from the US,
and figure out what the heck
that curved bar on the back is for.
It's about to get spoopy in here.
(creepy laughter)
You ever think, "Dang, I want to do some cool stuff,
but I don't have the right hat"?
Boom, problem solved.
Introducing the first official Kentucky Cobra hat,
perfect for doing anything in.
Perfect for doing stuff like this.
(pallette booms)
Perfect for climbing ladders.
(electric guitar) Perfect for shredding.
Perfect for chillin' on the couch.
With your boo.
She's in the bathroom.
I've been waiting so long for these to come out.
We've been working on them for a while,
and I'm really, really, really stoked
on how they turned out.
High quality embroidery on the front.
That's the new official Kentucky Cobra logo.
Donut hit in the back, also embroidered. Mesh back.
I love the fit, it's my new favorite hat.
I can't wait to see you guys wearing them.
Post pictures on Instagram, tag me in them.
I will repost. (disco music)
That's how you're gonna look when you buy one.
Ever since dead people have been buried
there has been a need to transport their body
to the burial site.
For most of recorded history,
the vehicle that transported the body
was either a couple of strong boys,
or a primitive wagon or carriage.
Like most things surrounding death,
the transportation became a ritual and tradition.
As a symbol of respect for the dead and the afterlife,
the carriage started becoming more decorative,
a tradition that can still be seen today.
Objects like the decorative platform
the body was displayed on, known as the catafalque,
and the pall, the cloth that lay over the body,
became part of the ritual.
Drapery, beautiful hardwood, and ornate glass
started adorning the coach.
The word hearse actually comes
from the medieval Latin word hercia, which translates to
large plow or rake for breaking up soil,
because of the iron's shape.
By the 1600's, anything that supported the coffin
was being called a hearse.
Ornamentality blossomed during the Victorian era,
as we started to see hearses with lanterns,
carvings of things like doves and scrolls,
and velvet curtains.
The first motorized hearses were actually electric.
In 1895, banker J.P. Morgan gifted the city of New York
with an electric hearse, which doubled as an ambulance,
which probably means that ambulances
weren't that effective at the time, I guess.
It wasn't until 1909 that the first hearse
powered by an internal combustion engine
showed up on the scene.
An undertaker in Chicago by the name H. Durward Ludlow,
let's just take a second to appreciate that name,
H. Durward Ludlow.
H. commissioned coach builders to construct a vehicle
with the coach body of a horse-drawn carriage,
and the chassis and front end of a bus.
(hybrid explodes)
The first ever automobile funeral
attracted a lot of attention,
and soon people from all around the country
started commissioning Ludlow's hearse
for their loved ones funerals.
But the idea didn't catch on right away
with other funeral directors.
The cost of building a hearse in those early years
was around $6,000 or 185 grand today.
It was too expensive for most other funeral homes
to commission a hearse of their own,
considering they could have a traditional horse-drawn hearse
built for a quarter of the price.
The first company to start
commercially producing motorized hearses
started up that same year in 1909.
Crane & Breed Manufacturing of Cincinnati, Ohio
were like the Bugatti of hearses,
and they also made these creepy coffins.
(dramatic music)
C. and B. took their already elaborate detailed design
from the horse-drawn hearses they were already making,
and applied them to these new vehicles, dubbed auto hearses.
They dropped in a 30 horsepower, four cylinder engine,
made into a three speed transmission.
It was rear wheel drive, chain driven,
and can go quote,
"15 miles per hour faster than any hearse should have to go"
which was 30 miles per hour.
It didn't take long before engine technology
and production streamlining advanced
and became less expensive.
Eventually, funeral directors realized
that with these new motorized hearses
they could host more than one funeral a day,
and hearse building friggin' slapped in the 1920s.
(upbeat jazz music)
One holdover from the carriage days was the color black.
Black traditionally signifies mourning,
which explains why most hearses you see are black.
Of course, there are other colors of hearses,
like white, which can signify the afterlife,
or plum crazy, which signifies that you're ready
to crack open a cold one with Dale Senior and Tupac
over there in heaven.
And gold, which you can see in Asian cultures.
In the 1930s, the shape of the hearse
transitioned from the tall, carriage-derived greenhouse,
to the longer Landau limousine style
shared with modern hearses.
If you remember from our car shapes wheelhouse
we did a few months ago, the Landau and the Landaulet styles
have retractable soft tops,
which have a distinct S shaped bar called the Landau bar
that supports the convertible top.
Most horses nowadays don't have a retractable top,
but that bar remains a stylistic relic of the past.
Honestly, hearses look kind of weird without them,
even though they don't do anything.
If you're like me,
and most of your friends are funeral directors,
you probably won't catch them
actually using the term hearse for these types of vehicles.
The proper term nowadays is funeral coach.
People in the death care industry,
and yes, that's what they've rebranded as,
are trying to phase out the word hearse
because of the grim implications.
When I hear the word hearse, I think of like Rob Zombie.
(metal guitar)
They've put a positive spin on it
by calling it a funeral coach,
kind of like a bus that offers a one-way ticket
to two very different locations.
In the US and Europe, luxury car brands supply
most of the donor cars for modern funeral coaches.
You got Lincoln, Mercedes, Rolls Royce, Jaguar,
even Maserati.
One manufacturer that has absolutely
dominated the funeral coach market,
at least in the US, is Cadillac.
And be honest, when you picture hearse,
it's probably a Cadillac, right?
Am I right, or am I right?
(exotic music)
Japan has its own style when it comes to hearses.
Oh, you thought we weren't gonna talk about JDM hearses?
(scoffs) Thought wrong.
The so-called Japanese style of hearses
are decorated to look like Buddhist temples,
and there are actually a few different types.
The Nagoya style has both the top and bottom decorated.
The Tokyo style has just the top decorated
in ornate gold accents.
And then there's the Kansai style, which is undecorated,
and the Kanazawa style, which is painted all in red.
It's pretty sick.
Ah, SR, can I get a S14 Kanazawa style?
(engine revs) (tires squeal)
(hearse canopy clanks)
(trumpet fanfare)
Thanks.
Funeral coaches don't come pre-built
from major manufacturers.
They're built by companies
that specialize in custom fabrication.
These companies most always build limousines as well,
because it's a very similar process.
These donor cars are chopped in the middle of the chassis
and split apart.
Steel extenders are then welded into lengthen the frame,
extra doors and panels are fabricated
to cover the new extended section.
Then a fiberglass shell is attached to the back.
Things like the wiring harness
and gas line also have to be lengthened.
Wood paneling is added to the bed in the back
and rollers are put in to make loading
and unloading the coffin easier.
When a coffin is inside a funeral coach,
devices called Bier pin plates keep it secured
so it doesn't shift around when the car is in motion.
The name Bier doesn't mean brewski.
It comes from a device that was kind of
the precursor of a hearses, uh, precursor.
A bier was a wooden platform
that was used to transport a body,
and had wheels, or even just planks,
that slid over the ground.
They're so old, they were mentioned in the Bible.
Nowadays bier lives on in name only.
This bespoke Jaguar hearse
is built using a bunch of custom made parts
that are hand molded by technicians.
The amount of work that goes into each vehicle
is tremendous.
They're keeping the art and tradition alive.
Look at that long boy.
Something that really surprised me
is that they use stock engines.
I would have thought that all the extra weight
would mean that they need more power,
but it only adds about 800 pounds to the total weight.
That sounds like a lot, but these luxury cars
have already very powerful engines in them,
so it's not really an issue.
There is one exception that's worthy of a small detour.
There's a dude named Arne Toman that built a hearse
to break the world record for fastest hearse.
It's a 730 horsepower turbocharged
six liter LS powered Chevy Caprice,
fully functional hearse with AC and rollers in the back.
Not only that, it's Iron Maiden themed
with an airbrush scene on the hood,
and a red leather interior.
Arne smashed the world record for fastest hearse
with a quarter mile time of 9.4 seconds at 146 miles per.
That's fast.
This is a nine second car, and it's a hearse.
If I drove a hearse, I would drive this one.
I mean, I already have my S14 hearse,
so this is my second hearse.
We always say that you should have three hearses.
You gotta have your daily, you gotta have your fun hearse,
and then the weekend hearse,
for going to Home Depot and getting some deadbolts.
It's the only thing I- (video beeps)
There are actually hearse car communities around the world
must like other niche car communities.
Hearse groups like the Michigan based Just Hearse N' Around
cruise slowly in their tricked out hearses
and hold a Guinness world record
for the longest parade of hearses
that they set in the town of Hell, Michigan.
That's pretty tight.
If you live in Hell, let me know how it is in the comments.
Anyway, back to regular funeral coaches.
All that fabrication that's needed
to lengthen these vehicles
takes an already expensive car, and makes it more expensive.
A typical funeral coach nowadays costs
between 60 to $110,000.
For a funeral home that's just starting out,
that's a huge investment, but it's a necessary one,
after all, a nice funeral coach
can really do wonders for business.
Remember before when I mentioned the death care industry?
Well I know this is a car show,
but I thought this was too interesting not to talk about.
The industry surrounding death,
like funeral homes, casket manufacturing,
hearse fabrication, et cetera, are very lucrative.
You know what they say:
There's nothing certain but death and taxes.
There's a lot of money there,
but that means lots of potential
All those extra things, like the hearse, flower van,
and police escort, come at a premium.
It's easy to upsell people when they're vulnerable,
and people are extremely emotional when they're grieving.
It's not their fault, but it gets taken advantage of.
Hearses have come a long way
from the utilitarian vehicles they once were.
The luxurious ride, the ornamentality, the ritual of it all,
it's a way to honor our deceased,
and give everyone that person touched
one last luxurious sendoff.
I think hearses are weird and cool, and I hope my grandkids
don't spare any expense at my funeral.
Hopefully I'll have my S14 hearse running by then.
I'm just waiting on a few parts in the mail.
Thank you for watching this episode.
I know it's kind of a morbid topic,
but also pretty interesting.
If you liked it, hit that like button,
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