Coachbult.com - Lorraine Car Company



Lorraine Car Company - 1917-1921 - (Motor Hearse Corp. of America) later Pilot - 1921-1924 - Richmond, Indiana

With the professional car business booming, D.H. Cummings launched the Lorraine Car Company in 1917 to manufacture funeral vehicles. By 1919 the company offered a large line of both conservative 12-column carved-panel hearses and modern limousine-style coaches. They introduced a passenger car in 1920 using a Wayne Motor Works (also in Richmond) assembled 122" chassis equipped with a 55hp Continental six-cylinder engine. The depression of 1921 affected many small automobile manufacturers and Lorraine was no exception. Cummings was forced to sell to the firm to his more successful Richmond neighbor, Pilot.

Now under Pilot ownership, Lorraine introduced a full line of coaches in 1922 and 1923. Directors could order a subtly carved 12-column hearse or a modern limousine-style combination coach in a range of colors which including a beautiful two-tone silver and gray.

The Lorraine funeral car remained in production until Pilot folded in 1924.

xxxxxx

LORRAINE- Richmond, Indiana - (1920-1921) - D.H. Cummings launched the Lorraine Car Company in Richmond in 1917 with $200 in cash and a blueprint. The blueprint was of a hearse, and the funeral car trade was the focus of Cummings' new business. For a while it prospered, and in 1920 the company also offered a line of large limousines. The cars were placed on a 122-inch wheelbase chassis, and were fitted with the 55 hp six-cylinder Continental 7R engines. This activity was strictly a sideline to the principal Lorraine business, and passenger-car production was minimal. In 1921 the Lorraine Car Company hit the postwar depression head-on. "Few people understand how hard the undertakers of the country have been hit by the unusual conditions," D.H. Cummings lamented to a Richmond reporter when Lorraine went into receivership in September 1921. "It has been calculated that the number of funerals, the country over, have been only two-fifths of normal, since last October." Apparently Lorraines were built for the company by Wayne Motor Works. Subsequently, Lorraine was taken over by the Pilot Motor Car Company of Richmond, which continued to market the Lorraine, but as a hearse only.

xxx

LORRAINE (US) 1919-1924

Pilot Motor Car Co., Richmond, Ind.

Lorraine hearses were a sideline of the Pilot company, a minor assembler of 6-cylinder private cars. Specification was conventional, only the house colors of silver and dark grey distinguishing Lorraines from other contenders in this class. Sv power units by Herschell-Spillman or Teetor-Harley were fitted. MCS

For more information please read:

The Professional Car (Quarterly Journal of the Professional Car Society)

Gregg D. Merksamer - Professional Cars: Ambulances, Funeral Cars and Flower Cars

Thomas A. McPherson - American Funeral Cars & Ambulances Since 1900

Carriage Museum of America - Horse-Drawn Funeral Vehicles: 19th Century Funerals

Carriage Museum of America - Horse Drawn - Military, Civilian, Veterinary - Ambulances

Gunter-Michael Koch - Bestattungswagen im Wandel der Zeit

Walt McCall & Tom McPherson - Classic American Ambulances 1900-1979: Photo Archive

Walt McCall & Tom McPherson - Classic American Funeral Vehicles 1900-1980 Photo Archive

Walter M. P. McCall - The American Ambulance 1900-2002

Walter M.P. McCall - American Funeral Vehicles 1883-2003

Michael L. Bromley & Tom Mazza - Stretching It: The Story of the Limousine