1959
Cadillac (USA) The Fleetwood 75
limousine and the four models below it appear in the 1959 Cadillac professional car
catalog; they are identified as being typical of the independent coach builders Eureka,
Miller-Meteor, S&S (Hess & Eisenhardt) and Superior.
 
Fleetwood 75 limousine
 
 
Eureka (left), Miller-Meteor (right)
 
S&S (left), Superior (right)
 
Improved suspension (left) and heavy duty generator
(right)
Eureka (USA) Various commercial vehicles
including those below
  
Eureka Landau, above was offered in six
different versions;
prices ranged form $11,251 to $12,881
Eureka combination ambulance/hearse with
regular roof treatment;
the price ranged from $11,006 to $11,224
This is the Eureka combination with optional,
"full view" styling;
pricers for this model ranged from $11,006 to $11,224;
the end-loading funeral car with electric table cost $12,636
This is the Eureka ambulance with optional,
"full view" styling; it cost $11,552;
note the roof-mounted tunnel lights and the optional Federal siren/light combination
 
This restorable
ambulance does not have the optional, "full-view" styling introduced by Eureka
this year and
consisting of bulbous, wrap-around rear corner windows; this vehicle was fully
restored by a member of the
Professional Car Society (PCS); photos taken during the restoration mat be viewed on this Web page
[the foregoing images were picked up on the Internet]
This Eureka Flower car appears to need restoring
[ Photo: © 1994, Yann Saunders ]
Hess & Eisenhardt (USA) Various other
commercial vehicles for the ambulance and funeral trades, including this one:
A surviving S&S Park Place end-loading
funeral car; according to enthusiast, Sarah, this may be one of
only a few combination hearse/flower cars made by S&S that
feature a removable roof section; enthusiast and professional car expert,
Bernie de Winter says this was the third and final
year such a car was offered;
S&S listed a price for it, but nobody knew if such a car was ever
built until this one showed up on EBay
Partial view of the Park Hill combination
coach
Superline Parkway
Köng, Walter [Basel,
Switzerland] ambulance conversion on stretched chassis; non-Cadillac from the cowl
back. Köng built similar ambulance bodies on the 1960 and 1963 chassis. This car carries
a special order body tag : #SO 002923 and the [commercial] chassis number is 59Z101265. On
the Swiss title, it is given as a "6-seater". It was owned for many years by
Heinrich Kaech who operated an ambulance/taxi service out of Dornach, near Basel, in
Switzerland. The vehicle was first registered as an ambulance on April 14, 1960. Its gross
weight is over 7000lbs. This custom ambulance was acquired in the summer of 2003 by a
French collector who decided (lightly) to drive it to Paris (nearly 400 miles) on one of
the hottest days of the year. Result: he blew an engine gasket at the halfway mark
and all but destroyed the motor !
  
Sorry for the poor image quality; these are stills
from video footage I made in 1984
of the International Cadillac meet I organized that year in Geneva, Switzerland
  
  
[Above two rows]: These photos were taken in Geneva.
by my son, Philip, in 2003; the
customized Köng ambulance was acquired by my friend Christian Vaney who subsequently sold
it
to a French collector; on the rear LH door, an inscription reads "I'm only 40
Years Young..."
Miller-Meteor (USA) Various commercial
vehicles including the selection, below
Here is the Miller Meteor Landau Traditional
end-loading hearse, with a starting
price of $10,482. The Duplex combination model went for $10,694
This (unlikely?) two-tone job depicts the Miller
Meteor Futura limousine/ambulance;
prices started at $10,474 and rose to $11,865 for the 3-way model with power casket table
This is the 42" headroom, straight
ambulance model
The Miller-Meteor flower car for 1959
[ Photo: © and courtesy Phantom
Coaches Hearses Club ]
 
 
Despite its sorry state, this survivor is such a rare
model as to be worthy of a total restoration
[ Photos: Internet, 2008 ]
This ambulance was offered for sale at auction on eBay in December, 2003.
According to the vendor, tens of thousands of dollars went into restoring this car ...even
though he said the gauges, wipers, blinkers and A/C were o/s. Note that the leather
front bucket seats are from a 1964 model; the steering wheel from a 1965; the wire wheels
are from the nineties, the boat horn is non-authentic, as is the upper chrome side
trim running from the front door to the rear bumper. Late
Extra, 4/2004: According to Sarah, my young friend and
professional car enthusiast from Cleveland, OH, the base vehicle is a Miller-Meteor
Sentinel model; Sarah is right! The car was acquired by an enthusiast in
England for less than the $25K asking price. Corrigendum
5/2004: At first I thought those rectangular roof-mounted tunnel
lights, blue lens siren and curved chrome side trim were not authentic, however, the new
owner has sent irrefutable proof that all these items are genuine MM issue; he
sent a period advertisement for Miller Meteor's Sentinel, Volunteer and Ambulandau
models (see below). He added that the vendor had repaired most of the outstanding defects
before shipping the car to Europe; he found the original front bench seat and sent that
over with the car.
Miller-Meteor's Sentinel ambulance
 
Left: the Volunteer, right: the Ambulandau
[ Above three photos are from a period ad supplied kindly by the owner of the MM
Sentinel survivor, below ]
 
  
 
 
These photos from Internet, courtesy of Dan
Hillebrandt
and www.motoeXotica.com
S&S [Hess &
Eisenhardt] (USA) Billboard car conversion from regular ambulance
This billboard car was
offered for sale on e-Bay in April, 2003;
the base car is the S&S Kensington ambulance from Hess &
Eisenhardt
Superior Coach (USA), 9 or 12-passenger Caravelle
or Skyview sight-seeing coach. Only six of these SUPERB wagons were
built ['59 aficionado, Bob Waldock, believes there were eight of them but he and his '59
Cadillac collector buddy, Ted Grill, can account for only six of them]. All
(six?) were delivered to the renowned Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado, to replace the aging
fleet of 1955 and 1956 S&S observation coaches. These
were the next generation of Broadmoor Skyview buses. Superior printed literature showing
those cars with similar Pontiac models known as Cargo Cruisers, but later changed
the name of the Pontiacs also to Caravelles. The Caravelle
combined Cadillac's eye-catching beauty for 1959 with large seating capacity, wide door
clearances and plenty of interior roof height . It was built on the heavy duty commercial
chassis, on special, heavy-duty springs and heavy duty 8.90x15, 6-ply tubeless tires; it
was quite similar in outward appearance to the firm's Royale funeral limousine.
Wheel base was 156" and overall length 251" (just an inch short of an astounding
21 feet!). The width at the side doors was 64˝". Superior probably hoped to sell
more of these to private buyers; to this effect they put out a colorful flyer (it too a
rare collector's item). It boasted "special custom exterior and interior appointments
to customer preference". The plexiglas observation roof panels were optional, as was
also a roof-mounted luggage rack; it is believed that ALL these wagons were ordered
with the observation roof, but NONE with a roof rack. Buyers were free to
decide on the body color and interior layout. There was a split back driver's seat and all
seats were genuine leather over foam rubber. Like the 1955 and 1956 S&S
models from Hess & Eisenhardt, these cars carried the Broadmoor
nameplate in gold on the upper portion of the tail-fins. There are few survivors. One of
these was offered for sale in Mansfield, OH, in October, 1978; condition and price were
not stated. My friend Ted Grill, formerly of Bayshore, LI (who moved later to Florida),
owned one of these in the early seventies; it was in restorable condition. Bob was able to
acquire one in Oklahoma, circa 1987.
 
(Left) Publicity photo on location in Miami, (right)
outside the Broadmoor Hotel, Colorado
 
The above three color illustrations are from a Superior
Coach Corporation product sheet
This is Bob's car; I photographed it in 1994
[ Photo: © 1994, Yann Saunders ]
 
  
Bob's car, now superbly restored
[ Photos: © 2005 and courtesy of the owner ]
Superior (USA) Various commercial vehicles
including the selection, below
Four versions of the Crown
Royale Landaulet hearse, de-luxe Model DL-604 were available, ranging from $10,781 to
$12,427
Royale Landaulet
combination
 
Crown Royale end
loading landaulet
 
Illustrations in the preceding four rows are from a Superior
Coach Corporation product catalog
Crown Royale combination car (left) could be
driven away for $11,047;
Standard Royale landaulet (right) was slightly less costly
 
Surviving Crown
Royale Landaulet combination
 
Surviving Royale Landaulet
Surviving Royale
limousine (located in France)
Surviving Crown
Royale limousine combination
Royale ambulance
  
Superior Royale ambulance, Model 606
[starting at $10586]
Illustrations in the preceding two rows are from a Superior Coach Corporation
product catalog
Superior Royale ambulance survivor; it is
owned by Dan, a PCS member from Ohio
 
 
Here is another surviving ambulance that was
converted from a funeral coach
by McPeck Motor Coach of Denver, CO. It is owned [1996] by Joe Unrein
[ Photos: © 1996 and courtesy of Emergency Vehicle Owners & Operators Association,
Inc. ]
Superior Royale Coupe de Fleur, Model 609
[it cost $10785 new]
Illustrations in the preceding two rows, again, are from a Superior Coach
Corporation product catalog
This survivor is registered with the Professional Car
Society (PCS),
Northland Chapter, who own copyright to the photo
[Unknown, USA] Possibly a modified
Superior combination coach, used for people-hauling.
 
[Unknown, USA] stretched, Series 62
with rumble seat (see photos, below):
[ Above three photos
© 1999, Y. Saunders ]
 
[Above two photos: © 2001, John Coyle, aka
"Caddy Daddy" ]
[Unknown, USA] stretched, Sixty
Special sedan
This image was picked
up off the Internet. The car is
called The Great White. The owner, Justin Gibes of
Cincinnati, OH, operates the car as a rental limousine
[Unknown, USA] stretched, Series 62
sedan
[Unknown, USA] stretched, Series
75 limousine
[Unknown, USA] Alleged movie
car from Ghostbusters
This car was offered for sale
by the Kruse auctioneers in April, 2003; according to Sarah, a young enthusiast from
Cleveland, OH, it is actually a BAD replica of the movie car; indeed , there was a bit of
a scandal
when the auction company found out it was NOT the movie car
[Unknown] From the Velasquez
funeral home in Trujillo, third largest city in Peru (located about 600km from Lima),
comes this unbelievable hearse conversion of a 1959 Cadillac Eldorado Seville
coupe. Photos show the car was fitted with a/c and Cruise-Control [although the body
tag does not include code "C" for the latter item]. Thanks to my Peruvian
lawyer friend, Fernando Murga, for checking this one out for me. Late
Extra [July, 2008]: The car was acquired by a collector in Houston,
TX; unfortunately, he decided he had too many other projects taking up his time, that he
put the hearse up for sale on Ebay.
  
 
The original color of this car was Persian Sand
(the most desirable color on the 1959 palette);
it featured also a white vinyl roof; interior trim was originally matching leather and
cloth in the same
bronze-pink hue as seen on the photo of the instrument panel; accessories included
air-conditioning and
Cruise-Control, visible in the photo; car suffers from a broken horn ring (a
typical flaw in older '59 models)
Note gold-anodized "sabre" wheels; these
were no longer current in 1959
 
  
[ Photos in above 3 rows are from the vendor's ad on
Ebay ]
Visser [meaning "Fisher", in Dutch]
(Holland) Various commercial vehicles (hearses and ambulances on regular or stretched
Cadillac chassis, like this one from 1959. My friend Dirk-Jan de Jong of Holland
wrote:
This is a very ugly example on a 1959 Cadillac commercial chassis. As you can see, the
rear of the car has been totally altered and the fins have been shaved off. The
non-whitewall tires (and the guys in front of the car) do the rest to spoil the picture.
This car has a non-standard windshield. At the start of the seventies it was all over for
the Cadillac ambulance as regulations (and money supply) were tightened and a switch was
made to the (Chevy)van-based ambulances.
 
Like Köng in Switzerland [see above], Visser shaved
off the '59 fins
and built an entire new upper body, including the windshield
[ Photo (left): Ambulances in beeld (1945 - 1975), courtesy Dirk-Jan de
Jong, Holland ]
[ Photo (right): the same or a similar ambulance in front of a Dutch hospital -
Internet, 2003 ]
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