Hearses aren’t happy places to be, but once they’ve completed their duty ferrying the dead to their final resting place, they can get a second life. Illinois brothers Christopher and Mike took this to the extreme by converting a vintage Cadillac hearse into a high-roofed camper that can suffice for a weekend away from the living.
Christopher owns a tattoo shop, and the hearse started life as a tattoo vehicle, but Mike had a different idea for the car. It’s called Campula, named after the Dragula from “The Munsters” TV show, which was built from a fiberglass coffin by renowned car builder George Barris.
The Cadillac might now be a camper, but it’s mostly stock underneath its redesign. It packs the stock 5.7-liter V8, though upgrades did include suspension goodies. It measures more than 9 feet tall and 18 feet long (2.7 and 5.4 meters), and it tips the scales at 6,300 pounds (2,857 kilograms). It’s meant to look stock – or as stock as a camper hearse can look. The hardest part of the conversion was raising the roof, which has a ribbed front to look like the entrance to a mortuary.
It’s not the most spacious camper, but it packs in some essentials. It features a fold-out sofa, a small kitchenette with a sink, and a fridge. It has a swing-out TV for both indoor and outdoor viewing, and it even comes with a fireplace. It also has The Dude’s rug from The Big Lebowski tying it all together. One thing it doesn’t have is a toilet, which was scrapped due to a lack of space. There are baskets in the back for extra storage, too.
The converted Cadillac hearse gets a lot of attention on the road, and not all of it is positive, but that’s part of the car’s charm. It’s one thing to see a hearse just cruising about, but it’s another sight to see a hearse driving around that’s also a camper. It might not have the latest luxuries and features, but it provides the basics wrapped in a novel package. It might be creepy, but it’s also very cool.
