Dumb things people say......

When showing the 67 M-M, I always put out a 3 ring binder with 2 pages in it. One is the history of Miller-Meteor, and the other is the history of Combination Coaches. Beleave it or not, a lot of people actually read them. It still doesn't stop the stupid questions though. The one I hate the most, is it seems like almost every time you stop for gas, or anywhere else, I get, do you have a body back there? I want so bad to say, no, but theres fixin to be. The last cruise-in I went to, a lady asked me why I turned my hearse in to a ambulance. Ok, I understand it is a combo, and it is a black car, but good lord her husband had just stood right beside her and red the darn papers I had out, and was telling there son that it was a hearse and a ambulance both. Por thing just didn't understand. Another question someone always seems to ask, is why does a hearse need a oxigen tank in the back if there already dead? If some people would just stop and think for a second before opening there mouth, they would sound a heck of alot smarter, even if there not.

Josh
 
Josh Gentry said:
When showing the 67 M-M, I always put out a 3 ring binder with 2 pages in it. One is the history of Miller-Meteor, and the other is the history of Combination Coaches. Beleave it or not, a lot of people actually read them. It still doesn't stop the stupid questions though. The one I hate the most, is it seems like almost every time you stop for gas, or anywhere else, I get, do you have a body back there? I want so bad to say, no, but theres fixin to be. The last cruise-in I went to, a lady asked me why I turned my hearse in to a ambulance. Ok, I understand it is a combo, and it is a black car, but good lord her husband had just stood right beside her and red the darn papers I had out, and was telling there son that it was a hearse and a ambulance both. Por thing just didn't understand. Another question someone always seems to ask, is why does a hearse need a oxigen tank in the back if there already dead? If some people would just stop and think for a second before opening there mouth, they would sound a heck of alot smarter, even if there not.

Josh
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You should tell them the oxygen is there so just incase the person comes back to life they can breath easier!!
 
Josh Gentry said:
When showing the 67 M-M, I always put out a 3 ring binder with 2 pages in it. One is the history of Miller-Meteor, and the other is the history of Combination Coaches. Beleave it or not, a lot of people actually read them. It still doesn't stop the stupid questions though. The one I hate the most, is it seems like almost every time you stop for gas, or anywhere else, I get, do you have a body back there? I want so bad to say, no, but theres fixin to be. The last cruise-in I went to, a lady asked me why I turned my hearse in to a ambulance. Ok, I understand it is a combo, and it is a black car, but good lord her husband had just stood right beside her and red the darn papers I had out, and was telling there son that it was a hearse and a ambulance both. Por thing just didn't understand. Another question someone always seems to ask, is why does a hearse need a oxigen tank in the back if there already dead? If some people would just stop and think for a second before opening there mouth, they would sound a heck of alot smarter, even if there not.

Josh
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Yeah, I was wondering that too. Why did you turn your hearse into an ambulance? :hide:
 
I ,am at a Mopar swap meet with the Olds .

? Is that a Dodge :pat:
? You Know they never made Oldsmobile Hearses (Then WTF is this ) :smiley_w_ballbat:


Try to explain what it is falls on deaf ears and then some.
 
My brother asked me why I have a little seat and a cig. lighter and ashtray in the back and with the best straight face and dry humor I could muster, I told him its for my passengers to have one last smoke on the way to the cemetery it calms their nerves and they can see their grave before we bury them. Then I walked off and he had to think about it for a long time. Then at dinner he asked my wife how do you get them to get back in their casket and he had to explain his question and she played along with her great sense of humor and straightened him out after dessert. We laughed so hard he won't come out to the garage anymore.
 
Mike Stevens said:
Maybe a book with pictures of the transition from car to hearse would help.
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This is something that I do. I have an album of my Accubuilt tour in 2005 with almost every step from start to finish.
I thought I had a pic of my display board (I have one for each coach), and what is on them including the conversion pics,a little about the car, and info about combos if it is one, but cannot find a pic, but here is an example of what is written on them.


1949
SAYERS & SCOVILL (S&S) CADILLAC
LIMO STYLE COMBINATION
HEARSE- AMBULANCE
S&S limousine style offerings were called Knickerbockers, and were offered in four coach versions, plus an ambulance version
This model is the Knickerbocker Series 400 combination
Body number 103 of aprox. 300 produced by S&S coach company in 1949 (exact number not known but numbers indicate less than 300)
Manufacturer's factory drive-away price: $6,060 without combo equipment (final price depended on options ordered)
Debut of all new “postwar” Cadillac professional car chassis featuring tail fins, full front fender styling, and high compression overhead valve V8 with 331 ci. and manual 3 speed trans. (Now has 350 with 350 auto trans)
Custom built for Norman Funeral Home in Grand Forks, North Dakota and was delivered November 2, 1949

COMBINATION COACHES
Combination coaches, which were very popular, gave a funeral director an affordable tool to operate the funeral home, while also serving his community with ambulance service. Funeral homes used to run the ambulance service for many years, because they were the only ones who had a vehicle long enough to carry someone in a recumbant position. Many times the funeral home offered the ambulance service for free or next to nothing as a good will gesture to the area he served. These coaches could be fitted with reversable casket rollers, folding attendants seats, removable roof beacons, (usually unbolted through a zippered headliner in the drivers compartment) grille lights, and under hood sirens. However, these options varied from one extreme to the other depending on the funeral directors needs. Combinations dissapeared from general service in the late 1970's when a downsized commercial chassis appeared at the same time as changes in the Federal Ambulance Regulations governing minimum width, headroom, and equipment levels.

VEHICLE MANUFACTURES DO NOT MAKE FUNERAL COACHES (NOT EVEN CADILLAC)

They sell a commercial chassis (consisting of special chassis, drivetrain, front clip, rear quarters, and dash) to various coachbuilders who custom make them into coaches, limos, flower cars, and ambulances. All the panels, interior, glass, (even windshield) are made by the coachbuilder. Since these cars are hand made there are rarely two alike unless ordered that way as part of a fleet.

For more info on these rare cars visit www.ProfessionalCarSociety.org
**Be sure to talk to the owner of this coach to find out how to join The Professional Car Society and The Iowa Hawkeye Chapter of the PCS
 
You have to realize a lot of people actually don't know anything about your car besides what they have seen on tv or movies (which rarely cover these old ones now) because they don't have the passion you have for them. Yea, I have gotten some weird questions about my car and a few people asking if I was going to turn it into a ghost busters car but we should not be jerks to them. I am in medical school and you would be surprised the questions you get asked when you are wearing scrubs and they fall into the same category as many of the questions asked here. Sometimes people genuinely did not think before speaking other times they just don't have the education or interest you do in your particular field.

Now days an ambulance is a big box on wheels and does not resemble a hearse at all and many people have no clue some pro cars used to pull double duty. It is hard to picture ambulances looking different than the big box on wheels for many now days.
 
History? what is that?

Several of us took our coaches to a mortuary school. We told the students some of the coaches were combinations. They had never heard the term. They were in their 20s and maybe 30s. It has been over 30 years since anyone built a combo. The students at the school had never been told that funeral directors were at one time the ambulance service in some towns. So we did our part and educated them that day.
The difference between those students and the general public is that the students wanted to learn.
Mike
 
I was at a car show a couple asked me why my hearse had "suicide doors" on the sides. I told them it was a "3-way" hearse. The women thought I wanted to have sex with both of them in the back. She thought I was "horrible person". Took alot of talking to calm her down!
 
Douglas, I agree with what you said in spirit, and I continually tell myself that same thing, that most people genuinely don't know much about our cars, and shouldn't be ridiculed because of their interests being elsewhere. But at the same time, there is a difference between an intelligent question, and a just plain stupid remark.

I think the two stupidest things I've heard was one time, trying to explain to someone what a Cadillac commercial chassis was, their response was "oh, so its a Chevy truck frame with a Caddy front end on it." All I could think of was "What??? Where in everything that I told you was the word Chevrolet mentioned?"

But for me, the one that takes the cake was from someone who knew someone who knew someone who used to work for General Motors, and told them how for one month every year, Cadillac stopped production of their cars to build all the hearses that they would sell during that year. Just where does some of this blatantly wrong information come from?

When I ask about someone else's vehicle, I do so because I am legitimately interested about it, and because I don't know about it. So when I receive an answer, I'm not going to argue with the owner because his answer may be at odds with some preconceived notion I had.

Likewise, I can understand a member of the general public or even the general old car community being fooled by a fake Ghostbusters car that someone built from a 59 Eureka or Superior, but I have heard Ghostbusters yelled at me while driving my 1980 Superior landau hearse, and my Bayliff Packard, which looks like nothing else on the road. How can someone possibly be so stupid as to confuse a 59 Cadillac with anything else?

And why do we have to put up with prejudice even from within the old car community? Examples:

Back when I bought my second and third hearses: "What are you going to do with the other one?", "I'm going to keep them", "But why?", "Because I like them too", "But they're all hearses", "So that means I can't have more than one?". Somehow I doubt the Corvette collector gets asked what he's going to do with his other ones whenever he adds to his collection.

"So what are you going to do with it?", "I'm going to restore it and take it to shows", "Why?" I rather doubt that the guy who buys a muscle car gets asked why he's going to restore it.

And why do we have to put up with being constantly told what we should do to our cars? Is there something wrong with just having a stock restored hearse or ambulance? The majority of people at car shows sure seem to think so. I had a person one time (who helped himself to opening up my back door by the way), procede to tell me how if it was his car, he would rip out this thing (meaning the extend table), and fill up the back with big speakers and a television and a giant cooler, to which I replied "then I guess its a good thing its not your car". His response was "well if you don't do anything with it, its just a big station wagon", to which I replied "Yea, and that's the way I like it!", as I slammed the door, and he walked away shaking his head. While I'm sure every old car owner has had to deal with the hotrodders/customizers telling them what they should do with their car, I doubt they get a constant barrage of it like us pro-car owners get.

In short, why is it seemingly okay to collect any kind of vehicle in this hobby except for hearses and ambulances? I've even been kicked out of a show once because it was felt a hearse wasn't appropriate. So, I hit my siren and drove down every aisle before I left, making the biggest spectacle of myself that I could.

One town near me holds a weekly Friday night cruise night, and has a featured car each week. One time when it happened to be Friday the 13th, the featured car was hearses. I and another hearse owner happened to be standing on the sidewalk having a conversation near some hotrods, when another hotrod drove past and yelled to someone he knew that was near us about how he couldn't find a parking spot. The person near us yelled back to him "Yea, they wasted good parking on those things" as he pointed towards the hearses, to which the other hearse owner I was talking to blurted out "Well what are you going to do, those damn hotrods are everywhere" as we decided to continue our conversation elsewhere.

The next year, when there was going to be another Friday the 13th, and the town released their featured car calendar for the year, that did not include a hearse night, one of the other local hearse owners called to find out why. He was told that the town received too many complaints about how inappropriate, tacky, morbid, and in bad taste the hearse display was, so they decided not to repeat it.

There are certainly cars out there that I don't like, and ones that I fail to see any appeal to collecting, but I realize that we all have our own interests, and I have enough decency to not go up to someone and criticize their car. But yet it seems to be open season on pro-car owners, and I think hearse owners in particular, in making us feel like outcasts in our own hobby.
 
Along with the "question page" I have a page on the history of Miller-Meteor, a page with two pictures of the Cadillac commercial chassis (it's a lot easier to show than tell), and a page the was in Hemmings magazine. My uncle gave me the Hemmings article. It was in Hemmings December 2004, I got my hearse Nov. 2004. The article was titled "Hearses: They're not just Halloween anymore".
 
I am actually on a Cadillac forum and even in the old Cadillac section most people do not know that a hearse and or ambulance was not made by Cadillac and most think they are basically modified stock Cadillac. A friend was amazed at seeing the underside of a hearse and that it was a completely different frame and I also informed him of the brakes and master cyl and rims being different and not swappable to his car. This stuff was even news to me when I first got my hearse as I was going to buy a rebuilt master cyl. just because mine was rusted up.

The person I got mine from on the other hand knew lots of misinformation on his own car thinking the hood was different on pro cars as well as just about every other thing I was told including the fact that he thought it was a 74 and not a 73. I am still trying to get the title from this guy as well <.<
 
'back in the day'

Many years ago I took a customized car to a car show. It was an antique car show. They were not fond of seeing an old Ford with a small block Chevy for power. So you can imagine what they thought when I drove up with my full custom bodied car. I parked and was walking away from the car when one of two old goats said "Its amazing what these kids can do with that damned fiberglass'. I turned without a word and placed several magnet on my car. Then I ask them if they ever saw magnetic flberglass. Then I went to the swap meet.
I like getting the chance to educate people about our coaches and the Professional Car Society. Some are surprised to find there is a club that caters to this type of car. I always tell them if someone will collect an item there will be a club for them somewhere. Be it salt shakers or cars or ?
Mike
 
When I'm at a car show or cruise-in with a Pro-Car, I do always keep in mind that most people are not educated on our cars, and really don't know anything about them. But at the same time, you can usually tell a difference in someone walking up to you who is genuenly interested in the car, and those who just think ooo a hearse, and plan on saying something stupid before they even get over to you. I really enjoy talking to people and trying to teach them about our unique cars, and enjoy it even more when you can tell they are walking away with a better knowlege of Professional cars, and a greater opreciation for them. There are some people however, who don't like, and refews to accept Professional cars at a car show or cruise-in. I took the 67 M-M to a car show about a year ago, and there was a GTO on one side of me, and a RoadRunner on the other. The guy with the GTO kept looking the car over, and asking questions about it all day long. The guy with the RoadRunner, was obviously not happy that he had ben parcked beside a hearse, and would hardly even speak to me. I always get a little nervice when pulling in a car show or cruise-in, as stupid as it sounds, but you never know how people are going to react to your car. Aspecially at these small town cruise nights, or car shows where they all know each other, and you know there all standing around talking about you and making jokes as you pull in. Then there are the ones that take a interest in the car, and see it as a unique classic car, and want to learn everything they can. I guess the only thing we can do, is continue to try and educate people about our cars, and keep in mind that most people do not have much or any knowlege about Professional-Cars, and just like every other car, not everyone is going to like them.

Josh
 
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