It might backfire when it starts, has no power steering, no seatbelts, wooden spoke wheels and wooden interior, but this unique vehicle is still providing a vital service.<\/p>\n
A Townsville funeral home has this week celebrated \u2014 complete with a cake \u2014 the 100th birthday of its 1925 Buick hearse.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The 1925 Buick Masterhearse is still used regularly for funerals in Townsville. (Supplied: Cameron Laird)<\/p>\n
Funeral director Ray Valdeter said keeping the vintage vehicle running was about more than style.<\/p>\n
“I have a fascination about the whole industry, dating back to the really early years, and I think it’s just preserving a lot of the history of the funeral industry,” Mr Valdeter said.<\/p>\n
“It’s not everybody’s cup of tea, but there are a lot of people out there that are vintage vehicle lovers.<\/p>\n
“A lot of families have said to us, ‘That’s just what mum or dad would have loved for their last ride.'”<\/p>\n
Ray Valdeter and Dennis Smith are preserving the history of the funeral industry. (ABC News: Baz Ruddick)<\/p>\n
Before motorised hearses appeared in the Australian funeral industry in the 1920s, horse-drawn hearses were typically used to transport the casket from churches to burial sites.<\/p>\n
“This is going back to real basics, and that’s just something that we should never lose,” Mr Valdeter said.<\/p>\n
“I think we need to be aware of what our forefathers had to use.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
Rescued from the chooks<\/p>\n
The Buick Master Six engine is a 75 horsepower, 225-cubic-in inline engine and carries the hearse to about 65 kilometres per hour. (ABC News: Baz Ruddick)<\/p>\n
Morleys Funerals’ 1925 Buick Master Hearse is used, on average, once a month.<\/p>\n
When it was purchased in 2000, it was found resting in a chicken coop in Gawler, South Australia.<\/p>\n
Mr Valdeter found the advertisement for the car in a classic car magazine.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Buick was rescued from a chicken coop in Gawler. (Supplied)<\/p>\n
He called on a friend in Gawler to inspect it and then had it shipped to Townsville, where he entrusted his friend Dennis Smith to bring the car back to life.<\/p>\n
“I think, overall, the whole project probably cost us somewhere in the region of $50,000,” he said.<\/p>\n
Tinkering to bring it to standard<\/p>\n
Mr Smith said the timber work on the side windows was in particularly bad shape when he received the car.<\/p>\n
“I made most of that up in fibreglass \u2014 making moulds from the timber,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I did a lot of repairs on the brakes, the differential, the starter motor, and rewiring.<\/p>\n
“The main thing was, just in general, it wasn’t really looked after. It needed a lot of work to bring it up to scratch.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Many of the parts which needed replacing in the vehicle had to be custom made. (ABC News: Baz Ruddick)<\/p>\n
Finding parts for such an old vehicle was particularly challenging.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mr Smith had to get parts custom-made, or even make them himself.<\/p>\n
“I’ve had various gears made for it \u2014 for the differential, the clutch, the starter motors, the ignition. You can’t get water pumps, so I had to make the water pump,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I taught myself along the way.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Classic and vintage hearses are a growing trend in the funeral industry. (ABC News: Baz Ruddick)<\/p>\n
The hearse is powered by the famous Buick Master Six engine, a 225-cubic-inch inline engine capable of producing 75 horsepower.<\/p>\n
Mr Smith is no stranger to early 20th-century mechanics, having worked on cars his whole life, including his own restored pre-1920s Hupmobile.<\/p>\n
Slow and steady to the final resting place<\/p>\n
Funeral assistant and regular driver of the vehicle, Martin Guernier, said the Buick was at its most comfortable when travelling around 55 kilometres per hour.<\/p>\n
“If it does 60, it does start to rattle a little bit. At just 55, it loves that, it drives quite smoothly,” he said.<\/p>\n
Martin Guernier says the vehicle is full of ingenious engineering, including the mechanical vacuum-fed fuel pump. (ABC News: Baz Ruddick)<\/p>\n
“The brakes are interesting. They’re an external hub brake, not the internal hub configuration, which means it takes a little bit to stop,” he said.<\/p>\n
“[Even though] you’re not going at a high speed, you do need to anticipate the lights wherever possible.<\/p>\n
“You’ve got to realise this [car] has only just come out of the horse-and-cart era, so a lot of things are wooden.”<\/p>\n
A winding system helps move the casket safely into place in the back of the hearse.<\/p>\n
Without air conditioning, the front window swings up to allow the breeze to flow through and keep the deceased and driver cool.<\/p>\n
Travelling with a backup plan<\/p>\n
The Buick gets regular drives between funerals to ensure it is in top condition. (Supplied: Cameron Laird)<\/p>\n
Relying on 100-year-old mechanical technology, the funeral directors make sure there is a modern hearse following in the unfortunate event the centenarian has a mechanical failure.<\/p>\n
Mr Valdeter said while the hearse was unique for its age, there was a growing trend for funeral companies to have a classic or vintage hearse in their fleet.<\/p>\n
He said there were several Buicks around the country still operating, but they were rare.<\/p>\n
Aside from funerals, the team makes sure it takes the car out for a run from time to time to ensure everything’s working smoothly.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Morleys Funeral team celebrated the hearse’s 100th year with a cake. (ABC News: Baz Ruddick)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It might backfire when it starts, has no power steering, no seatbelts, wooden spoke wheels and wooden interior,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":106398,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64,63,76475,76477,76476,99,28566,76473,76471,64697,76474,6649,76472],"class_list":["post-106397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-buick-1925","tag-buick-master","tag-buick-masterhearse","tag-business","tag-funerals","tag-gawler","tag-hearse","tag-historic","tag-memorials","tag-townsville","tag-vintage-car"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}