A funeral is a ceremony connected with the final disposition of a corpse, such as a burial or cremation, with the attendant observances. Funerary customs comprise the complex of beliefs and practices used by a culture to remember and respect the dead, from interment, to various monuments, prayers, and rituals undertaken in their honour. Customs vary between cultures and religious groups. Funerals have both normative and legal components. Common secular motivations for funerals include mourning the deceased, celebrating their life, and offering support and sympathy to the bereaved; additionally, funerals may have religious aspects that are intended to help the soul of the deceased reach the afterlife, resurrection or reincarnation.
A hearse is a large vehicle, originally a horse carriage but later with the introduction of motor vehicles, a car, used to carry the body of a deceased person in a coffin at a funeral, wake, or memorial service. They range from deliberately anonymous vehicles to heavily decorated vehicles.
Minivan is a car classification for vehicles designed to transport passengers in the rear seating row(s), with reconfigurable seats in two or three rows. The equivalent classification in Europe is MPV or M-segment.
A pickup truck or pickup is a light-duty truck that has an enclosed cabin, and a back end made up of a cargo bed that is enclosed by three low walls with no roof. In Australia and New Zealand, both pickups and coupé utilities are called utes, short for utility vehicle. In South Africa, people of all language groups use the term bakkie; a diminutive of Afrikaans: bak, meaning bowl or container.
A van is a type of road vehicle used for transporting goods or people. Depending on the type of van, it can be bigger or smaller than a pickup truck and SUV, and bigger than a common car. There is some variation in the scope of the word across the different English-speaking countries. The smallest vans, microvans, are used for transporting either goods or people in tiny quantities. Mini MPVs, compact MPVs, and MPVs are all small vans usually used for transporting people in small quantities. Larger vans with passenger seats are used for institutional purposes, such as transporting students. Larger vans with only front seats are often used for business purposes, to carry goods and equipment. Specially equipped vans are used by television stations as mobile studios. Postal services and courier companies use large step vans to deliver packages.
The Chevrolet Astro is a van that was manufactured and marketed by the Chevrolet division of American auto manufacturer General Motors from 1985 to 2005. Sold alongside the GMC Safari, the Astro was marketed in multiple configurations, including passenger minivan and cargo van.
A woodie is a wood-bodied automobile, that became a popular type of station wagon the bodywork of which is constructed of wood or is styled to resemble wood elements. The appearance of polished wood gave a resemblance to fine wooden furniture and on many occasions the wood theme continued to the dashboard and inner door panels including the rear tailgate.
A flower car is a type of vehicle used in the funeral industry of the United States, frequently under the Cadillac brand. It is used to carry flowers for the burial service, or sometimes to carry the coffin under a bed of flowers. Built on the same commercial chassis as a hearse, the flower car has half-height rear bodywork on the rear similar to a pickup truck bed. The bed contains a liner to hold the flowers, normally built of stainless steel to resist rust. Some flower cars have a raised, flat tonneau cover across the bed at the top, upon which the flowers sit; the center portion sometimes is designed to raise and lower, hydraulically or by hand. If the flower car is designed to carry a casket, it will be stored under the tonneau cover in the space beneath, behind the opening rear gate.
There are many types of car body styles. They vary depending on intended use, market position, location, and the era they were made.
A military funeral is a memorial or burial rite given by a country's military for a soldier, sailor, marine or airman who died in battle, a veteran, or other prominent military figures or heads of state. A military funeral may feature guards of honor, the firing of volley shots as a salute, drumming and other military elements, with a flag draping over the coffin.
The Wayne Corporation was an American manufacturer of buses and other vehicles under the "Wayne" marque. The corporate headquarters were in Richmond, Indiana, in Wayne County, Indiana. During the middle 20th century, Wayne served as a leading producer of school buses in North America.
A panel truck in U.S. and Canadian usage is a small delivery truck with a fully enclosed body. It typically is high and has no rear windows in the rear cargo area. The term was first used in the early 1910s. Panel trucks were marketed for contracting, deliveries, and other businesses. Often described as a small van used mostly for delivery rounds, the British equivalent is a "delivery van."
GMT is a nomenclature used by General Motors to designate multiple vehicle platforms. In use since the early 1980s, the GMT nomenclature is used for light trucks, full-size SUVs, and vans, along with several medium-duty trucks. With only a few exceptions, nearly all GMT vehicles use body-on-frame construction, along with rear-wheel drive powertrain configurations.
A panel van, also known as a blind van, car-derived van or sedan delivery, is a small cargo vehicle with a passenger car chassis, typically with a single front bench seat and no side windows behind the B-pillar. Panel vans are smaller than panel trucks or cargo vans, both of which use body-on-frame truck chassis.
Superior Coach was a coachbuilder in the American automotive industry. Founded in 1909 as the Garford Motor Truck Company, Superior is best known for constructing bodies for professional cars (hearses) and school buses. Following major downturns in both segments in the late 1970s, Superior was liquidated by its parent company in 1980. From 1925 to 1980, the company was based in Lima, Ohio.
A combination car was a vehicle that could serve either as a hearse or as an ambulance, and had the capability of being swapped between those roles without much difficulty. This hybrid usage of the cars reflects an era when funeral homes offered emergency ambulance service in addition to their primary trade, especially in smaller towns and rural areas.
Cutaway van chassis are used by second stage manufacturers for a wide range of completed motor vehicles. Especially popular in the United States, they are usually based upon incomplete vans to be bigger or smaller than pickup trucks and SUVs made by manufacturers such as Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors which are generally equipped with heavier duty components than most of their complete products. To these incomplete vehicles, a second stage manufacturer adds specific equipment and completes the vehicle. Common applications of this type of vehicle design and manufacturing includes small trucks, school buses, recreational vehicles, minibuses, and ambulances. The term "cutaway" can be somewhat of a misnomer in most of the vehicle's context since it refers to truck bodies for heavy-duty commercial-grade applications sharing a common truck chassis.
The Suzuki Carry is a kei truck produced by the Japanese automaker Suzuki. The microvan version was originally called the Carry van until 1982 when the passenger van versions were renamed as the Suzuki Every. In Japan, the Carry and Every are kei cars but the Suzuki Every Plus, the bigger version of Every, had a longer bonnet for safety purposes and a larger 1.3-liter 86-hp (63 kW) four-cylinder engine. They have been sold under myriad different names in several countries, including those with Chevrolet and Ford badges.
A funeral procession is a procession, usually in motor vehicles or by foot, from a funeral home or place of worship to the cemetery or crematorium. In earlier times the deceased was typically carried by male family members on a bier or in a coffin to the final resting place. This practice has shifted over time toward transporting the deceased in a hearse, while family and friends follow in their vehicles. The transition from the procession by foot to procession by car can be attributed to two main factors; the switch to burying or cremating the body at locations far from the funeral site and the introduction of motorized vehicles and public transportation making processions by foot through the street no longer practical.
