Packard had a tight relationship with Henney coachbuilders, they built googobs of hearses, flower cars and ambulances. When Packard went belly-up, so did Henney.

Oddly enough, we are in a similar situation now with Cadillac. The DTS is going out of production, and GM seems content to let Lincoln have the hearse and limo market. There will be no Cadillacs on commercial chassis after this year. Lincoln will phase out the Town Car after 2011 or 2012, after that, no telling whose car chassis will be used for hearses and limousines...maybe Lexus and Mercedes?! Either that, or SUV-based chassis...Escalade hearses.

Anyway, professional cars have always been halo products for upscale American brands...you want your last ride to be in the best car possible, after all.

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2002 Ford ZX2
2 x 2013 Honda Civics

Interesting, you could argue that GM did the same thing in the 90's with the police car/taxicab segment - They killed the Caprice/Caprice Classic...

So did they intentionally kill it - or did the follow the (bad?) advice of a marketer/moneyshuffler who said "go with a smaller FWD platform and the police departments will buy those...Oh, and don't forget to abandon the full size sedans for Body-on-frame SUV's - they'll sell better."

-John

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2009 Kia Sedona
2009 Honda Odyssey EX-L
12006 Jetta Pumpe Duse
(insert Mercedes here)

Husband, Father, sometimes friend =)

It should be interesting...I guess GM figures 2000 hearse chassis a year, plus how ever many limo chassis, don't justify building big sedans, even though consumers will still buy the cars too. Same thing as 1996, when the big RWD Brougham went out of production, along with the Caprice and Roadmonster, all of which were the basis for hearses. Only problem is, the remaining GM sedans are too narrow, both in the body shells themselves, and the space between the rear strut towers, to be good hearse chassis. Further, GM has always been really good about beefing-up the commercial chassis, for instance, new FWD hearses have 8-lug wheels and bigger brakes than the sedans, I think the transmissions are even geared differently, to account for the additional weight. Ford has always done less for their commercial chassis...cop car cooling and brakes, and that's about it.

You may recall that funeral directors were freaked out in 1976, when the downsized 1977 Cadillacs were coming out, they thought they were too small, and looked funny...now the 1977-1991 Caddies seem huge, so maybe someone will engineer something that will enable smaller chassis to be used successfully for hearses.

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2002 Ford ZX2
2 x 2013 Honda Civics

I want mine to be in an all black, crew cab, dually Cummins with stacks.

Hmmmm...might be a market for that for us hicks...and limos for the weddings and proms...

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1980 300TD-China Blue/Blue MBTex-2nd Owner, 107K (Alt Blau) OBK #15
'06 Chevy Tahoe Z71 (for the wife & 4 kids, current mule) '03 Honda Odyssey (son #1's ride, reluctantly) '99 GMC Suburban (255K+ miles, semi-retired mule) 21' SeaRay Seville (summer escape pod)