The Associated Press
 AP Photo/MJ Schear Cadillac ambulances from the 1970’s and 1960’s are displayed in N.J. Tuesday, at a gathering of the Northeast U.S. Chapter of the Professional Car Club. |
MOUNT LAUREL, N.J. — Over the years, retired hearses and ambulances have been recycled by surfers (room for boards); painters (space for ladders); and rock bands (a place for drum sets); or crushed for steel scraps.
But to enthusiasts, there is only one way to see them — as they were intended: To transport the dead or injured.
About four dozen that have been restored to their original condition, along with some vintage limousines, will be on display this week during one of the region’s more bizarre auto shows.
Undertakers, first aid squad members, and other enthusiasts - some obsessed with death — will show off the fleet during the Professional Car Society’s annual meet, held Wednesday through Saturday in Mount Laurel.
The big cars have a small, albeit obsessive, following.
Jon and Denise Power, who live in West Norfolk, England, became fans of Lincoln Zephyrs about 15 years ago. When they saw a hearse version, they thought it was too cool not to buy. At the time, it was their only car. Turns out, it’s great for grocery runs, too.
Soon, the couple found themselves interested not only in cars, but also in the culture of death.
Denise Power said she’s long been fascinated by death. She thinks that the English in times past had it right when families used cemeteries as parks.
“Death is not scary,” she said.
He’ll tell you, as hearse fans often do, that the vehicles aren’t as creepy as you may think. “You don’t die in a hearse,” Jon Power said. “You could die in an ambulance.”
The couple now owns four hearses and belong to a society dedicated to preserving gravestones. And for the last two years, they’ve made the Professional Car Society shows part of their holidays.
“We want to save the cars,” Denise Power said, “to stop the vandalism of these vehicles.”
Unlike other classic cars, the professional cars have not always been cherished by car lovers. Their fans say too many of them were sold for scrap when steel prices rose in the 1990s.
Many of the ambulances favored by collectors, which look like oversized station wagons, were built on the chassis of luxury cars like Cadillacs and Packards. Those were phased out in the 1970s as new federal rules started to favor more standardized vans.
Limousines and hearses have evolved more gradually. But aficionados say modern ones are just not the same.
The vintage models are “all about craftsmanship,” explained George Hamlin, a technical writer from Maryland who began the club in 1976, a dozen years after he bought his first hearse.
Until the late 1970s, firms like Superior and Miller-Meteor, most of them based in Ohio, would take the chassis and use other parts, like doors, and build them into hearses, ambulances, limos, and the rarest of the breed - flower cars used for big funerals.
Each car took five to seven months to make.
Some of the cars were especially creative. Funeral directors in the heartland used to run ambulance services as well and would use a hybrid hearse-ambulance, depending on the need.
Dan Brintlinger, a 62-year-old, fourth-generation funeral home director from DeKalb, Ill., said his family used the so-called “combination cars” when he was a kid.
With a few panels that could be easily turned around, and sirens that could be strapped up top, hearses were quickly transformed into ambulance. They were phased out just as he was getting into the family business.
Brintlinger said he still loves ambulances, and brought to the show a gold 1970 Cadillac that was once in service for the Ho-Ho-Kus, N.J., emergency squad.
The cars in the show are restored to look like they did when they were in service, right down to stretchers and oxygen tanks in the back of the ambulances.
Those other reuses by surfers and their ilk are highly discouraged.
One particular 1959 Cadillac ambulance is downright taboo, said Dan McCann, the chairman of the meet.
“Being called a Ghostbuster car,” he said, “makes people cringe.”