Elvis Hearse

49 calls a year is bairley enough to stay in buisness, and theres no way of knowing if new owners could bring that number up or not. Good luck with whatever you guys decide to do.

Josh
 
Richard Vyse said:
It is a beautiful funeral home which was built new just three years ago. We can get into it with only 50 grand down, not bad. He'll hold all the paper but too expensive at 1.2 million for a home that did only 49 calls (full service) last year which is almost half what he did three years ago. Town is a bit too small for us as well.

Richard
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That's a difficult case load to deal with in my opinion. I was talking to the then new owner of my Uncle's former place in Indiana when I asked what the volume was he sighed and said three cases the prior year.
I don't have any knowledge of what volume he dealt with back in the 60's and 70's it certainly wasn't at that level. It was kinda comical to me then that we'd sit around and he'd make a comment about "I took Mrs. Smith to the hospital last week and she's overdue."
 
To update and old thread, its believed after speaking with a funeral director today that the 76 M-M was used up and buried with a bunch of others after they were retired from service use. I don't have proof other than what the man told me today.
 
I want to be careful how I word this, as I am trying to stay out of the fray... but there is a Carolina funeral director who has long maintained he has the 76 M-M used for the removal, and SCI sent it to the firm he now owns back in 76 or 77. When a newspaper photo of him and his 76 appeared, I immediately noticed something, the car he is pictured with(the color has been changed to black) is a 76 M-M Crestwood. The 76 M-M coming out of the hospital is a 76 M-M Landau Traditional.
Yesterday, I was contacted by a PCS member who was bit wound up when a gentleman that does Elvis history posted a video on YouTube of an interview with the funeral director and there were plenty of shots of the car, which was plainly a 76 Crestwood. He tried to make contact with the history buff and I did too(it was one of those online forms you fill fill out, that half the time never get to where they are going), and to our surprise, this morning the video had been yanked. He has since reached out to the history buff again as we had assembled photos of standard 76 M-M Landau's and 76 M-M Crestwood in a factory photo. More on this if there are any developments. We now return you to your local, stations.
 
The PCS member who notified me yesterday did speak late today with the gentleman who works on the history, he said he had an early backlash against the video that it was pretty clear there were 2 different models of the 76 M-M available, and the one in the video did not line up with the photo of the one coming out of the hospital. He said he did not realize there were different models of hearses (I can't remember all, Citation, Classic Limousine, Standard Landau, Crestwood, wasn't there an Olympian?) so he had not looked closely into it. I took it from the conversation that he had taken down the video and would not be posting it again. I only remember one Crestwood I have ever seen, Morris in Asheville had a black over gray 78 M-M Crestwood.
 
The only thing I could add to all of this is I saw a t-shirt I wish I would have bought.

Being a NASCAR fan, it was in reference to Dale Earnhardt 'Dale Didn't Die-Elvis Needed A Driver'
 
This came up again yesterday when I was contacted by a funeral director who text to say, "I just touched the hearse used in Elvis' funeral...". I told them they had not. Turns out the visit was made with a 1976 M-M Crestwood(the funeral hearse is obviously the downsized 1977 M-M), to me, the hearse coming out of the hospital on the Elvis removal was clearly a 1976 M-M Traditional Landau. The photo I posted shows a M-M ad slick for a Crestwood, the black hearse in the newspaper photo shows the stainless steel bands of a Crestwood, sans the wood paneling - probably wore out and gone long ago.
I do not understand how even any amateur car buff could look at the photo of the hearse coming out of the hospital, and look at the photo of the car in question, and think it is the same model.
It has been suggested that the 76 was "converted" or "made to look like" a Crestwood.
I have been in this business for 43 years now, and the notion that a corporate funeral entity (or independtly owned firm even) in 1977 looked at a year old car and said, "We need to send this back and get it made into a Crestwood", or a someone said, "Let's get rid of the current landau bars and make this look like a Crestwood....", is just not credible with me. Funeral Directors change colors, add chrome on a b post, and do different things, but changing a car into a another model just not does not sound right to me.
I feel like I am going through the Barrett-Jackson debacle over the Kennedy car again.
De Ja Vu...or, it was night when this surface, so Night Ja Vu...Elvis removal hearse.jpg76 M-M Crestwood.jpgmike cook and 76.jpg
 
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