Hearse

Cadillac’s hearse history began in the mid-1910s, when the brand’s chassis first became a foundation for professional cars built by outside coachbuilders. The earliest Cadillac funeral-car applications appeared in 1916, and the nameplate’s story then unfolded in distinct eras rather than one uninterrupted factory model run. In the prewar and postwar decades, Cadillac commercial chassis became especially important to funeral-home builders, who used them for hearses, ambulances, and combination cars. Cadillac’s long-wheelbase commercial chassis program became a familiar base for coachbuilt funeral cars from the 1930s through the early 1980s, after which GM ended the dedicated commercial chassis. The hearse concept did not disappear, however: Cadillac-based professional vehicles returned later as incomplete-chassis conversions, including modern DTS-era hearses assembled by specialty coachbuilders. Because the nameplate spans separate production periods with a long gap in between, it should be treated as a recurring Cadillac professional-vehicle application rather than a single continuous model.