“Consider yourself. I want you to imagine a scene from your childhood. Pick something evocative… Something you can remember clearly, something you can see, feel, maybe even smell, as if you were really there. After all, you really were there at the time, weren’t you? How else would you remember it? But here is the bombshell: you WEREN’T there. Not a single atom that is in your body today was there when that event took place. Every bit of you has been replaced many times over… The point is that you are like a cloud: something that persists over long periods, whilse simultaneously being in flux. Matter flows from place to place and momentarily comes together to be you. Whatever you are, therefore, you are not the stuff of which you are made.”
— Steve Grand
“If that statement does not send chills down your spine, read it again until it does.”
What he is pointing out is that any memory you have from your childhood (assuming your over 20) can be as vivid and moving as it can be but you were never there. Not one atom that made up your body during that experience is with you today, yet it still was you then wasn’t it?
The car is still the same car no matter how often you replace the engine and transmission just like you are still you. In fact even more so since I’m sure the body panels, seat, dashboard and many other things are original too.
Whether you keep the same block and train or not, it might be more a question for metaphysics to argue if want to call it “the same” car.
However, if you walk around the residential streets of Havana (located right next to the ocean), you’ll occasionally come across someone working on an old U.S.-made car (as well as not-so-old Soviet cars). Sometimes they use pretty interesting techniques to keep things like carburetors working, going so far to employ paper clips or something like that. If they can do that with a '50s-era car, it doesn’t seem too far-fetched to me that a hearse which gets little use can remain functional longer than your typical car.
In other words, yes, wear and tear isn’t the only determinant, but I think it’s still the major determinant of how long a vehicle can stay useful.
When I worked for a funeral parlor in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, I drove a hearse that was, at the time, over 20 years old. Like most such vehicles, it was garage kept and low mileage. The owner finally traded it on a new model in the early 90’s. That one was in service right up until the owner’s death a year or so ago. It went, along with his other assets, to whoever ended up owning the place. He had no children or close surviving relatives.
The old hearse, I believe, ended up in the possession of a local fellow who “customized” it with a lot of Harley Davidson-themed crap. It could have formed the basis of a really cool retro hot rod. Too bad the guy who bought it was a dufus.
I’ve worked on a lot of hearses and known well over 50 owners. Lifespan depends on a lot of things.
Some big V-8s are actually at a disadvantage if they are always driven slow. One funeral director I know used to have his boy take the hearse out on the highway every month or so and “blow the carbon out”. I’ve done valve jobs for ones that never had chances at real speed. Motors are odd things and its hard to guess how they will react unless you design them to the task. Hearse motors aren’t - for the most part.
Many are “aftermarket coaches” these days; not as heavily rebuilt as a stretch limo but still changed significantly from how they leave the factory (often as a station wagon). Who did the body and how can greatly affect lifespan.
Accidents. They happen. Usually not in the funeral itself but in the funeral home picking up the body from the hospital or where ever. Some places use vans for that now or pay an ambulance service to do the pick-up for them but some hearse getting “customized around a telephone pole” by some junior employee who got woken up in the middle of the night to go pick up Granny Annie from Shady Acres paid for my one vacation last year.
FWIW as someone with no desire to ever actually own one ------- the Buicks are less of a money pit than the Caddies are.
We just had a station wagon with the windows painted out. That’s what the director used to bring the bodies in from the county morgue or senior homes. (If it was the later–with a doctor-signed death certificate at the moment of passing–the body might still be warm when I helped the director lift it onto the embalming table.) The hearse itself was used only for the ceremonial transportation.
But that doesn’t mean that it always went slow or only short distances. A lot of our burials were at cemeteries across the bay in the “City of the Silent” (Colma), and that involved a drive of about 20 miles (over the Oakland-Bay Bridge), which was mostly freeway.
I never got to drive the hearse (I believe at that time it was a Teamster job), but I drove the “dead body” station wagon up the street many times to Mountain View cemetery, and once I used it to take a body to SFO over the bridge (using the carpool lane).
Its one of those “your mileage may vary things”. I’ve done some repairs for one director who only leaves Pittsburgh/Allegheny County once every couple of years. His are always look cherry and low miles when he sells them but I wouldn’t take one on a bet. I know a few places up along Rte 80 in the Brookville/Clarion area where a 50 mile run to the cemetery is at least monthly. My uncle (that I was named for) passed away near Dover DE and was buried at the state veterans cemetery. The procession (very usual for there) included a stint on the highway at speeds of 80 or a little better. In the owners clubs people often scout the area and local habits as much as they do the actual hearses before buying one. Everyone prefers places where highway comes into play if possible.
As an aside – I driven a couple hearses and morgue vans loaded but usually only for “stinkers”. I may have mentioned in a past thread but me and a couple friends were on call for a few counties when they found someone in their home long dead - usually between the soap and soup stages. I remember one we bagged once and the winding road leading out – and hearing the sloshing from the back. Sometimes I wish I had lead a less interesting life.
Henny/Packard flower cars --------- just saying.
