Every funeral home finds itself in the situation of choosing between short, medium or long wheelbase frames whenever there’s the need to buy a new funeral car. These are the technical dimensions regarding the future features and equipment of the funeral car that will be made to measure for the funeral home.
Simply speaking, the wheel base distance is the distance between the two wheels (from the middle of the front wheel to the middle of the back wheel), as you can see in the three images of this article.
In order to address this topic we have to specify what we mean by short, medium and long wheelbase.
The wheelbase is the distance between the front wheel axle and the back wheel axle on the same side. For the manufacturing of a special vehicle, such as a funeral car, this is a fundamental value because its length will have an impact on the manoeuvrability and stability of the hearse made on the chosen frame, and on the possibility of being homologated with more seats in the cabin (2, 4 or 5 seats). These will correspond to homologation data and level of features depending on the regulations in force for registration and homologation of special vehicles in the destination state.
1. Short wheelbase hearse
The short wheelbase hearse is made on a standard frame of a Mercedes Benz VF 3400 vehicle with a 3400 mm (134 inches) wheelbase. The vehicle is delivered from the factory as represented in this image, without equipment. It is the kind of frame chosen by funeral homes of towns with narrow and curving roads, usually located on hills or mountains and with graveyards with little room for manoeuvre on the main driveway. It’s the favourite funeral car of small companies that want to contain costs.
On this kind of frame you can make a funeral car with little room in the cabin
And with a short length of the coffin compartment, but with a lower purchase price.
In the cabin you can have two homologated seats (driver and passenger) and behind the seats there is no room to store the briefcase for the closure and the welding of the coffin, the cart or other essential equipment. Due to the added weight needed for the transformation of the frame in hearse, both the rear brakes and the shock absorbers are modified to sustain the weight during the funeral service and to be homologated according to the current safety standards.
2. Medium wheelbase hease
As reference image we have a Mercedes Benz W212 or W213 frame, made on a VF 3700, called medium wheelbase frame.
The typology and the technical features, compared to the short wheelbase, give the possibility to create a hearse with more room both in the cabin and in the coffin compartment.
This model can be a 4×4, useful in mountain areas where there is snow on winter. It is possible to have a bench behind the seats of the cabin, useful to store the briefcase or other equipment for the funeral service. This kind of frame cannot have five homologated seats in the cabin.
3. Long wheelbase hease
The Mercedes Benz VF 4000 hearse is made on both the W212 and W213 models and has a wheelbase frame. In this case, dimensions matter! The frame in sturdier, the wide wheelbase enables to make a hearse with five homologated seats in the cabin and a greater length of the coffin compartment. The curtain wall between the cabin and the side of the coffin compartment door can be made with durable materials, of a certain thickness, without reducing the space in the cabin.
The VF 4000 is born with a sturdier frame, ensuring the parameters that directly impact the distribution of the total mass of the hearse on the frame. This ensures more balance and security on the road regardless the environmental conditions. New funeral cars models made on VF 4000 wheelbase are manufactured with industrial technologies which increase the reliability, ensuring sturdiness and security for a long term use. For a designer there is no limit to the imagination on this model frame.
Those frames are made and homologated so that the official warranty of the manufacturer (Mercedes Benz) will be preserved even after the transformation.
No matter which kind of hearse a funeral home wants, there are some prevailing features that compete in the choice.
From our point of view, the more helpful characteristics to decide are two:
* First, the hearse must represent both the image that the company want to promote in front of the clients that contact the funeral home and the latent or indirect image that is perceived by the people who attend the funeral service.
* Second, there are the prevailing requirements: the dimension of roads or town, the hill or mountain area where snow prevail and the organization of the cemeteries where the services of the company are carried out.
Often, the funeral car is bought to give the image needed to outperform the competition in the operating area.
And when you invest on image, everything has its price.
Thank you for taking the time to read this article.
