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During the 1960s, the W.S. Ballantyne Co. of Windsor,
Ontario turned out small numbers of custom-built funeral cars and ambulances
for Canadian funeral directors and ambulance operators. The one-off vehicle
shown on the back cover is a raised-headroom ambulance conversion of A 1964
Chrysler station wagon built for an ambulance operator in St. John's,
Newfoundland. Rear headroom was raised 10 inches.
see The Professional Car, Issue # 51, First Quarter
1989
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A number of station wagon conversion firms offered service car and ambulance
conversions of Plymouth, Dodge and Chrysler station wagons into the late
1970s. The most prolific of these were those done by the Automotive
Conversion Corp. of Troy and Birmingham, Mich. Other companies included
Abbott & Hast in Los Angeles and Universal Coach in Detroit. In Canada, the
Elegante Coach Co. of Kitchener, Ont. and a few small concerns in the
Province of Quebec -- Cloutier and DeMers -- also offered standard-wheelbase
Dodge and Chrysler hearse conversions. The short-lived W.S. Ballantyne Co.
built a small number of one-off ambulances and hearses on Plymouth, Dodge
and Chrysler chassis between 1963 and 1967. Chrysler Corporation actually
promoted its Plymouth, Dodge and Chrysler station wagons as the ideal
service car in funeral service trade journals in the 1960s and '70s.
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