1959 Impala Hearse

The hearse initially went into Burnham Autos for finishing, but one thing led to another, and as Grants ideas got increasingly wilder, the whole project just grew, culminating in the entire Burnham Autos crew putting in two weeks of 15 hour days and an all-nighter to finish the car for the NASC Nationals.

The hearse initially went into Burnham Autos for finishing, but one thing led to another, and as Grants ideas got increasingly wilder, the whole project just grew, culminating in the entire Burnham Autos crew putting in two weeks of 15 hour days and an all-nighter to finish the car for the NASC Nationals.

The motor came out and the front chassis rails were plated over to smooth them out. While the engine bay was empty the firewall was replaced with a smooth sheet steel item, and the wiper motor relocated inside the cab, as well as a polished SD1 power steering rack replacing the bent stock arrangement. A US-sourced disc brake conversion kit was also added. The Chevy rear axle was outed in favour of a 9in Ford item from a Ford Galaxie, but before this went under the car the pumpkin was centralised and the brakes were swapped for Granada discs and callipers.

The nitrous bottle, subs and hydraulic pumps (custom made to look like coffins) live in the rear, along with four batteries in the quarter panels. The accumulators are mounted in the rear wheel wells and under the front floorpans. For the uninitiated, these are steel spheres half titled with hydraulic fluid and half filled with nitrogen in a bladder. As nitrogen is compressible, it acts as a spring, with the fluid travelling back and forth along the pipes from the accumulator and cylinder, as the car travels over bumps. It's basically the same principle as used on Citroens. Despite the hydraulics, those huge side windows have held up..  ..so far!

The hydraulics are operated by two pumps situated below the rear section of the coffin deck. These feature Stone No 8 pump gears and hand-made headstone-shaped end heads, or manifolds, of Nickel Chrome steel with two double acting solenoids and two check valves in each. The oil tanks are polished stainless steel fabricated in the shape of coffins. Each pump has been tested and produces in excess of 6,000psi. A pair of Optima yellow top batteries located in the rear quarter panels are wired in series to power the hydraulic pumps at 24V, as well as the pneumatics.

The tailgate and the front and rear sections of the coffin deck are all pneumatically operated on cantilevers, all running from a five litre storage tank located between the stereo amplifier rack and the sub-woofer cabinet under the coffin deck. A 24V compressor feeds from this tank through three control Solenoids, all operated from the control box with the hydraulics as per normal lowrider practice.

A complicated system of cantilevers raise and lower the coffin decks and tailgate, though with the stereo, hydraulics, pneumatics and nitrous bottle under the deck, there's not a whole lot of room left.

The 6V71 blown 350ci Chevy has a colour-coded block to match the purple anodising found throughout the engine bay, along with custom fabricated stainless headers.

Pump it up

With the running gear finally in place Grant's imagination went into overdrive and it was decided to add hydraulics.

The hearse no longer runs springs, instead they've been replaced with hydraulic cylinders and accumulators. The rear cylinders are single acting. Whilst the fronts are double acting, meaning they can be compressed as well as expanded, so the front wheels can be picked up individually. All are mounted top and bottom.

Billet Specialities 7x18in and 9.5x20in Viper Executive wheels fill the arches, wrapped in 225/40/18 and 245/40/20 Yokohamas front and rear.

Dead cool

Seeing as the hearse was rapidly becoming insane, what better for the next step than a mad stereo system? There's a remote control Alpine head unit and CD multiplayer under the front section of the coffin deck, with two 600W Pioneer amps bridged to provide 1,200W to the Kenwood sub-woofers in a custom made box. There are also two more amps bridged for 700W and 400W. Under the centre of the extremely crowded coffin deck you'll find a pair of Sin three-way Pioneer speakers, two 6x9in three-way Pioneer speakers in the kick panels, and a 5.5in mid-range speaker in each door, along with 1in tweeters.

All this runs through Power Connector Cables and gold plated terminals, including the battery terminals, via a 300A gold plated fuse. To keep this little lot cool there are a pair of fans under the coffin deck, and another pair of Optima yellow top batteries in the other quarter panel, wired in parallel for 12V, providing the power. If you think all this can be run from one alternator, you'd be very wrong; this monster runs 12V and 24V alternators to supply power to all the electrical systems.

The control box features four controls for the pneumatics and four for the hydraulics, giving total control including freewheeling. Oh, and that's a real shrunken head. Certainly beats furry dice for effect!

Blown Job

After all that wizardry, you'll be glad to know the motor isn't nearly so complicated, just your basic blown, nitrous injected small block Chevy. Bought as a ready-built unit, the engine previously did duty in a Cortina race car, and as such Grant isn't too sure of the internals, though he does know it's got a steel crank, forged pistons, roller rockers and hydraulic lifters. Keeping the whole shebang cool is a four core aluminium rad, along with two 14in Magnelli fans. The 6V71 blown 350ci Chevy has a colour-coded block to match the purple anodising found throughout the engine bay, along with custom fabricated stainless headers. The blower is a 6V71 GMC, not a 6/71, the most obvious external difference being the angled bolts on the sides, with a pair of 650cfm Holleys. The one-off pulleys were machined, with Paul fabricating the polished 2in stainless steel headers, feeding a 2.5in twin stainless system, culminating just under the rear bumper in a pair of flamethrowers. They're more like rocket afterburners, and sound like it too!

A brand new Art Carr Turbo 400 trans is equipped with a 2200rpm stall converter and a B&M Megashiffer, while connecting it to the rear axle is a custom built propshaft.

It's easy to forget that all this work went on in and around an already painted body, though after the smoothed firewall was completed, the engine bay was painted, as was the fabricated tailgate and modified radiator support panel.

Body detailing includes hidden Nissan indicators behind the grille, all-new woodwork, machined ally bullets added to the grille and billet coffin spikes, as well as a billet brake pedal (connected by rod to the master cylinder behind the driver's seal) machined to match the aftermarket throttle.

With the exception of the MkII Escort seals, the interior is stock 1959 Impala, finished off with a Budnik steering wheel and Moon instruments. The interior was re-trimmed in black leathercloth and brushed nylon and a new carpet and headliner fabricated.

As  with any new car, Grants hearse has experienced a couple of minor teething problems since collecting its first of many trophies, but these were soon sorted out with a quick trip back to Burnham Autos.

Since its full feature and gracing the front cover of Custom Car magazine, Grant has returned to Burnham Autos to commission a custom paint job that features unique Gothic styled flames painted in flip pearlescent purple with ‘blood’ red tips.

If you don't know what a stock Impala grille looks like, this will be lost on you, but each of those bullets was machined from billet ally.

Even the upper control arms are chromed and detailed with anodised panels. The original steering column leads to a Rover SD1 rack, polished of course.