In the Case of This 1965 Cadillac Hearse, I Said Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish

When you’re intrigued by the illogical, strange things can happen. And in the fall of 1980, in steamy Miami, they did.

With a work-related relocation to New York coming up, my company had agreed to pay all moving costs, including airfare. Too easy. Instead, some masochistic penchant compelled me to spend my own money on this abandoned hearse and drive that up there instead.

Spied in a weed-choked lot beside an old clapboard house, the S&S-bodied Cadillac looked like Johnny Cash’s “Man in Black” on wheels. I should have walked on by but couldn’t. Instead, I stopped, stared, and approached the car in a trance. I should have been the predator here. Instead, I was prey.

Inside the home, an elderly lawyer explained that he’d taken the car in payment for services rendered to a local removal service and would happily sell it to me for $350. Why fly 1100 miles in a comfy wide-body jet, chatting up flight attendants and sipping Miller High Life, when driving this haunting relic seemed doable?

The commercial-spec 9.00 x 15-inch tires, each sporting knife punctures in their sidewalls courtesy of neighborhood thugs, explained the hearse’s low stance. Thus, testing the car first required laboriously jacking it up and taking the wheelset to a shop for tubes—unsafe, of course, but cheaper than new treads.

Prior to the move, I made a 190-mile trip to Melbourne, Florida, to run the Space Coast Marathon (without training—more masochism) and slept in the rear space the night before the race. Didn’t go well. After cops booted me from a school parking lot, I found a church lot to continue my slumber, my windup clock ticking forebodingly beside my head, like in some Edgar Allen Poe tale. Later, two muscle cars squealed into the lot and inebriated partiers surrounded the hearse. They shrieked to find someone in a sleeping bag inside, and thankfully departed. (They departed; I was not departed…)

A week after the marathon, my roommate and I headed up Interstate 95. Equipped with a 429-cubic-inch V-8, the 3-ton hearse loved a street fight, and we didn’t lose a race until Richmond. A bigger loss, however, took place on the George Washington Bridge, at night, as we headed into Manhattan, when a rear wheel hub separated from the axle and ended our journey there and then.

We arrived at our high-rise apartment behind a tow truck where, indignantly perched on three wheels, the hearse quickly amassed $135 in parking tickets. With costs rising fast, we got the car to a shop to address the wheel, then sold it to a punk band at a loss. Which was actually a win.

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