Silent ride interrupted – funeral coach crashed

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It’s 1929 and if you are into the funeral business in the USA, you will know coachbuilder Henney of Illinois. The company may have been responsible for a phaeton-type sports car a few years earlier, but it was the hearse, the funeral coach, the flower car and the landau limousine that really made Henney famous. They used light ash frames clad with Meritas fabric, which made them remarkably quiet inside.

This is said to be a ‘virtually new, wrecked, late-1920s Henney ambulance in Tampa’, as it was photographed in January 1930. And although the damage doesn’t seem too bad in that first picture, have a look at the other side. Oops.

No, we won’t be making jokes about the state of the passengers after the crash here. Or about the Goddess of Speed hood ornament just visible. It is a Packard, isn’t it? Henney made hundreds of them, but how about survivors?

Words Jeroen Booij, Pictures Robertson-Fresh / Funetorium

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