Imperial Hearses 


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This is an ad for a National hearse on a '64 Imperial chassis. National is the coachbuilder responsible for the "House of Diggs" '57 Imperial hearse.

As you can see, the windshield and other proportions look very strange indeed. My theory is that National may have already been doing hearses for one or more of the GM makes other than Cadillac (they did Chevy and Pontiac hearses in the '40s and '50s) and simply airbrushed an Imperial body beneath a roofline or over a body they'd already done for GM.

I left Cadillac out of the possible body sources for a reason; all '59-'65 Cadillac professional cars I have seen (and the '65 was identical cosmetically to the '64, unlike the other '65 Cadillacs) continued using the wraparound windshield shape first introduced in '59, similar to the '59-'60 GM passenger cars but larger...



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