Fun fact to know and share. Much of the Bonneville coverage you will see Chad and I providing starting at the end of the week will be posted from the back of a car of some sort. We’ll be working on updates from the salt and to get them posted in a timely manner we work in whatever terrible rental junker we have at the time. This week we’ll have some real crummy wheels but if we had some brains we’d grab a 1971 Pontiac Bonneville hearse like this one! The car has a 455 four barrel engine, plenty of workspace in the back, and it looks awesome! The body already needs to be completely redone so taking it onto the salt won’t hurt our feelings much.
Aside from the obvious, this thing pretty much rules. Owned by lifelong Pontiac guy, the best line in the ad is one that we used in the title. “This is not a beatdown hearse,” the seller says. “Just a rundown from age hearse,” if there have ever been better words spoken on eBay we have never seen them. We also have not seen many 1971 Pontiac Bonneville hearse examples. Cadillacs were the most prevalent make of hearse and ambulance cars at this time although the vans were rapidly transforming the ambulance business back then.
The benefits of this thing on the salt are innumerable. The air conditioning still works, the headroom cannot be beat. It has a 1978 Grand Prix SJ steering wheel, a pristine front bench seat, and a license place that says DeadSLD. That’s all perfect right there. The twin snorkel air cleaner, swapped in four barrel carb, and the rally wheels are all perfect. Sure the roof leaks but it isn’t going to rain next week anyway!
Check out the photos and then hit the eBay link for the full listing, photos, and more –
Good luck with that lads – I wouldn\’t be seen dead in that thing….
Would be great if you could clean the “stank” out of it!!!
Paint it white and make a Ghostbusters Ecto-1 replica. Then run it at Bonneville.
I’m not so sure about this being a hearst. Looks like it was an ambulance? Still a cool car either way.
Yeah I was thinking that is maybe was an ambulance, red lights on front and is that a two way radio in the front seat? But yet the body looks hearsey.
Oh, so what. It’s a Pontiac Bonneville, so Bonneville goes to Bonneville!
Looks like a combination coach, did double duty as a hearse and ambulance. Federal legislation in the late 1970’s put the end of the end of the commercial-chassis car based ambulance.
This one being so rare it would be great seeing it restored back to stock, in the original color. Cadillac built a really, really good commercial chassis, Buick, Oldsmobile and Pontiac were more economy options. A few years earlier, there were very small handful of 421, 4-speed combination coaches built.