Remember the seemingly generative AI-altered Cadillac someone tried selling on Bring A Trailer in January? That was deeply strange and unsettling, partly due to the deceptive role that generative AI may play in the car world, but also partly due to the failure of guardrails to prevent the listing from going up in the first place. I much prefer real cars that look like AI hallucinations to poorly edited photos of a car, which is why a hearse recently auctioned on Cars & Bids immediately caught my eye.
For the past century or so, if you died and weren’t cremated, liquified, or dumped in the sea, you’d probably end up in a special car. Sure, there were horse-drawn hearses before the rise of the motorcar, but there are some distinct benefits to the internal combustion age. It’s a lot harder to spook an engine than it is to spook a horse, which means the recently deceased are now less likely to tip over. Anyway, if a loved one was indeed loved, mourners probably want to see the deceased in something dignified and comfortable, which is where Cadillac comes in. If you’re only going to get one last ride, might as well do it in a luxury car.
In North America, the vast majority of hearses are still Cadillacs, but the times are a-changin’. That old Fleetwood may have been several tons of chrome and grace decades ago, but car design has moved on substantially in the past 30 years. That brings us to this incredibly weird 1996 Fleetwood hearse, which has undergone quite the remodeling.
According to the auction description, “This Fleetwood has been modified in the style of a 2017 Cadillac XTS,” although we don’t exactly know why. Sure, an XTS is a more modern car than a D-body, but its proportions are completely different. Nevertheless, someone seems to have spent huge amounts of time and money on making this thing look less ’90s, and the results are amusingly out-there.
It starts at the front, with an attempt to round out a boxy face. Not only has someone grafted the grille and front bumper elements of an XTS onto this Fleetwood, but the 2010s Caddy’s vertical headlights also make an appearance. That’s rather odd, because while the Fleetwood has a hood long and flat enough to land aircraft on, the XTS doesn’t. Perhaps that explains the slightly kludgy overbite from the leading edge of the hood, although that might be more of a conversion quality thing. Don’t look too closely at how the front bumper’s held on.
Around the side, the extent of the work really starts to take shape. There’s an entire body line here that wasn’t there originally, sweeping from the rear quarter panel to the front wheel arch, a full four panels per side. Is it metal? Is it Bondo? Is it fiberglass? Who knows? The important part is how it means pretty much every panel on this Fleetwood’s been touched. Also viewable in profile, wheels that appear to have been lifted from a third-generation CTS, but aren’t anywhere close to the right offset for the old-school Fleetwood. Hey, if the bolt pattern and center bore line up, right?
Alterations are equally extensive at the back, with everything massaged to fit the taillights from an XTS. They even got the little chevron in the rear bumper. Sadly, there aren’t any before photos of this hearse, but the result is something that looks off in a fascinating way. Like scaling a photo without locking the proportions.
Besides the radical exterior treatment, the rest of this Cadillac Fleetwood hearse is pure 1996. The pillow-soft seats, the wide and flat dashboard, the 5.7-liter small-block V8 with “port fuel injection” proudly molded into the intake plenum. Not groundbreaking, but reliable. This is a working vehicle, and sometimes simplicity is key in keeping these things on the road. Pretty much all of the 44,500 miles on this thing’s clock are last-ride adjacent, which means this thing has some stories.
Still, the fact that someone went to such lengths to make a ’90s icon look like a sibling to the Chevrolet Impala is mesmerizing. This hearse certainly isn’t everyone’s style, but the paint alone likely cost more than this thing’s $5,100 hammer price. I can’t be mad at someone paying project car money for it, because this Cadillac’s a story of execution. It might not have completely nailed it, but it’s finished, and the world’s a little bit richer for it.
Top graphic image: Cars & Bids
This is a wildly bad conversion. But with the prices of a new hearse, I get it if your old one is still in great condition.
Why does this hearse have locks on the doors? Because people are dying to ride in it!
Ride in that thing? Over my dead body.
So, I sure hope that’s a church in the background of these photos, because a funeral home having a children’s playground seems really creepy to me.
It’s a new offering for kids to play with Grandma one last time.
I was chewing pop tart reading that, and almost choked. Thank you for nearly killing me with laughter. LOL
That better be a REALLY soft landing zone at the bottom of the slide.
Not so strange – the Ahlgrim Family Funeral Home in Palatine Illinois (suburb of Chicago) that has a miniature golf course in their basement
Why don’t they toss in a concession stand while they’re at it?
Ahlgrim? With a name like that you’re destined to be either a funeral director or a coroner.
This seems like someone was trying to answer the question I always have about hearses, which is what do you do with them when they’re no longer “fancy” enough but still run great and only have a few thousand miles on them?
They figured they could update the look for cheaper than buying a new one and trying to pawn this off on the edgy goth college kid (they still have those, right??). Alas, they were wrong. Oh so wrong.
True story: In college I bought an ’82 Eldo. Drove that thing with some massive rod knock in the V6 around campus in the early ‘aughts. I found an ’82 Eldo *hearse* on Craigslist and the guy was willing to do a trade plus $2K cash (me to him). My friend at the time, now spouse, talked me out of it on the threat that she would no longer ride in the car with me.
Would daily a hearse if I didn’t have real life responsibilities.
I’ve always kinda wondered why hearse conversions like this still exist, when starting with a Escalade ESV seems about 100x easier. I know Escalades aren’t cheap, but an XTS wasn’t cheap either. And the cost savings in the conversion seem like they’d more than make up for it.
Also, back in high school I dated a girl who had a cousin who was a mortician and funeral home owner. They didn’t have a real hearse, just a black Suburban. They had to rent a “real” hearse sometimes for specific funeral requests… which I guess answers my question above, but who the fuck out there actually cares? Is it black, clean, and fits a casket? I guess add that weird swoopy if you insist. What exactly is that swoopy thing?
It’s a Landau bar. Just like on late 60s T-Birds. Looks like a thing that used to lower cloth roofs, now its just for shits and giggles
It’s probably becoming less common, but many families specifically request a hearse. For my families funeral home, they use a minivan for non funeral transport of a body, and my dad has always had a Suburban for a DD for those late night pickups.
In a small rural community, we have to toe the line between fancy and practical vehicles for the business.
Talk about being hauled off in a Rubbermaid bin…
Examples like this only reinforce my support for and intent to be cremated.
I am experiencing some for of PTSD as I glance, (can’t look for more than a second or two at a time.) at this God damned Loch Ness Monster. It actually makes me flinch.
As a matter of fact if I were to croak and my family made my remains ride in that thing my soul would be suing their asses off for emotional abuse on People’s Court.
And I’d haunt their asses til the end…
I am almost shocked that someone actually paid actual money for this fiasco.
“Examples like this only reinforce my support for and intent to be cremated.”
Have you considered composting? Its cheaper, more eco friendly AND you become delicious mushrooms and/or plants!
A sky burial is also eco friendly. Or maybe be food for the predators at the zoo.
A ‘sky burial’ is eco-friendly, and the name sounds lovely, but what it actually entails is “lets just leave grandma’s corpse outside for the birds”
Ultimately grandma will be eaten by SOMETHING. That’s just the way the world works. Even putting her in an urn up on the mantle is just delaying the inevitable. At some point those ashes are going to be too much hassle for someone who doesn’t want to keep them around. Then she gets unceremoniously dumped somewhere, maybe even into the trash or down the toilet like a goldfish. So why not use grandma to feed the birds now? Didn’t she like birds?
Better that that than put her in the ground to tie up more real estate for years to come. If there is one thing the dead do NOT need it’s real estate.
Bodies don’t take up that much space, why not bury granny at the end of the garden (where all her dead pets are probably already buried), then plant a tree on top. As long as the body isn’t pumped full of preservatives it’ll get broken down over the next few years.
Leaving someone to decompose outside is smelly and unhygienic, carrion birds are generally pretty messy eaters, you’ll end up with granny’s thighbone getting dropped onto your neighbour’s house or something.
Ideally I guess you’d go to your local natural history museum and ask them for some of the corpse beetles they use to strip skeletons.
If you’ve got the room for it, sure. Granny liked trees.
“you’ll end up with granny’s thighbone getting dropped onto your neighbour’s house or something.”
Perfect! It’s the revenge she would have wanted. She never liked those people. They never picked up after their dogs. She’d get a smile knowing those stupid dogs dragged her smelly, rotting thighbone throughout the house and onto the bed as a chew toy. Serves those jerks right.
But if sky burials aren’t your thing and if there’s no room for a tree how about a burial at sea? Fish need food too.
Only if they grow these mushrooms off my corpse:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/article/20260121-the-mysterious-mushroom-that-makes-you-see-tiny-people
So THAT’S what Tweak was on!
Cobblestone floormats or GTFO!
There’s a lot of unsaid ‘for some reason’ about this whole thing.
Duplicate
I see a 4-door ute waiting to be unleashed…
GUYS THEY DID A LIMO TOO: https://carsandbids.com/auctions/36GL8qzy/1999-cadillac-limousine
Love that it has the 90s gauge cluster
Forget this ugly thing. If I die of communicable disease, I want my body launched over the walls of some billionaire’s compound.
I’ve told my family that when I’m dead, they can just throw me in the trash
So Klingon.
This is a crazy amount of work and cost for a hilariously off-looking result. I love this stuff.
You know those projects where you try to save some money, but instead waste tons of time and end up spending the money anyway? Someone spent many weeks and a lot of labor cost on this bad boy to avoid buying a new one. And then had to go outside and look this thing every day.
Sunk cost fallacy is a lovely thing, sometimes.
I would be embarrassed to have my last ride in this.
But as my last ride will be in an urn to the family plot, no hearse needed. Can be like my stepfather’s last ride – to Florida from Maine in the passenger footwell of my BMW convertible. He did love BMWs. Now he sits in his cookie jar on a shelf in my mother’s condo. The man also LOVED cookies!
Told my wife to use an old coffee can for me. Just make sure to lable it.
I’d have thought your people’s tradition would be to drop the dead into a sun. Something about ashes to ashes, stardust to stardust.
It’s really difficult to launch someone into the sun. It uses much less fuel to yeet them out past the heliopause instead.
Not for a lizardman!
I’ve gone a bit native in my 4 millennia on planet. And its good to occasionally make the occasional humanesce statement to maintain my cover as a human pretending to be a lizardman in a human suit.
If I didn’t have that family plot, I’d probably just donate myself to science. Still might.
I’ve thought about donating myself to the military for explosive testing. Go out with a bang
Would work for me too. Once I am 300lbs of rotting meat, I don’t really care what happens to it.
The original 96 Fleetwood was also a sibling to the Impala 😛
Yes it was, I had a ’96 Fleetwood in college and for a few years after. Fantastic car, very smooth and comfortable in a way the Panthers never were (and I’ve had 4 of those)