Last rides around the world

In Africa, the dead linger longer as ancestors,
they also get longer hearses. 

HUMAN bodies do three things in exactly the same manner, but no matter in which culture we copulate, defecate and die, our courtship rituals, toilets and final rides differ almost from city to city.

This is especially true in India, where its seems any vehicle with space for a coffin can and is pressed into service as a hearse, from a double-cab Tata bakkie converted into a last ride by a bling load bin; to a rather plain Tata midi-bus. Converted by Samson Motors, the midi-bus boasts a refrigerated
drawer for the deceased and seating for the surviving family.

Bling the load bin and hey presto, the bakkie is now a hearse.

In Africa, where the ancestors are believed to linger longer, the dead get treated in the type of “eight-wheeler” stretched limos made famous by a Mandela family funeral. Sometimes, they seem to insist on such ceremony.

Senzo Ndlovu (36) of Khayelihle Funeral Services in Pietermaritzburg tells of a funeral where he suspected the ghost of one dearly departed “had done something” to stop their cheaper but always reliable “four-wheeler” Toyota hearse in its tracks.

“Nothing we did could get that [Toyota] hearse to start again, so we moved the casket to the eight-wheeler and the Toyota suddenly started,” he told Wheels.

In the far east, glam and glitter continues a lifetime of face saving. In Japan a Buddhist-style Japanese hearse built on a Lincoln Town Car from the early 1980s has all the gold leaf paint the survivors can want.

No one can however beat the pomp and splendour of a royal send-off in the far east. When King Sihanouk of Cambodia died in China on October 15, 2012, a 100-day funeral process preceded the final funeral procession of giant floats, each of which would have won a prize in the Rio Carnival.

In the Philippines, world capital of self-made cars, backyard-cobbled-together mongrel cars nevertheless turn heads. Australian sailing couple Sue and Philip spotted a hot rod hearse in Quezon in the Philippines. It combines a Mercedes-Benz grill, beach buggy fairings, a Mahindra Bolero cabin and someone’s pagoda roofs on the rear.

On the isle of all things droll

In England, the isle of all things droll, the dead can be delivered in an armoured tank or by bicycle.

Nick Mead first converted an FV432 armoured personnel carrier into an old European-style hearse, with a glass display box.

A former tank driver, Meade turned an FV432 armoured personnel carrier into a fitting last ride for his late tank driving instructor.

“My old mate Big Graham was rolled out of a Rolls Royce hearse and in to Tankhearse which I was chuffed about …

“The undertaker even asked if I fancied a hearse trade, and I think he was serious,” Meade explains on his website.

The reverend Paul Sinclair, owner of Motorcycle Funerals Limited in the UK, operates a fleet of motorcycle hearses and has started bicycle deliveries of late tree-huggers.

The reverend’s bike fleet consists of several Triumph motorcycles retrofitted with sidecar slarge enough to fit a full-sized coffin.

He also has a Harley-Davidson bike matched with a sidecar as well. He likes to remind the surviving family just like you won’t clothe a late Liverpool fan in Everton strip, or bury a Muslim like a Christian, bikers don’t want to be seen dead in cars.

Sinclair set up his Motorcycle Funerals company in his garden shed and has since expanded to Scotland, with thousands of funerals done across the UK in proper biker style.

Fit undertakers Kate Bouckley and Tim Bartlett offer
the last word in enviro-frienly funerals

What goes for hard-living, fossil-fuel-burning bikers also goes for the gentler, recycling souls who would not want to be seen dead in a fuel-guzzling van. For them Reverend Sinclair started tandem bicycle hearses, the ultimate in sending your body to the worms in high tree-hugger style.

British media quoted the former Pentecostal minister and sheet metal worker as saying: “Because we did a motorcycle and sidecar hearse, every now and again we were asked to do the funeral of cyclists, because it was the nearest thing they could get to a bicycle. So in the end, I built one, a coffin-carrying bicycle. I call it a bicycle made for three.”

Several funeral parlours have since imitated Sinclair to offer environmentally aware deceased their last rides to the grave in coffins made of willow, wool, bamboo or cardboard for the last word in eco-friendly funerals.