A professional car in modern times is an automobile that has been modified with extensive coachwork for service in livery transportation (limousine) or in funeral home operations (hearses or flower cars). Professional cars often have longer wheelbases, and longer coachwork than their ordinary counterparts.
Until 1980 ambulances were available on professional car chassis, such as those built by Cadillac or Packard. Combination cars, which could be utilized either as an ambulance, a first call vehicle, or as a hearse, were also used. Since that time, legal and professional requirements concerning ambulance construction have generally made car-based ambulances impractical. See History of the ambulance for details.
Famous quotes containing the words professional and/or car:
“Three words that still have meaning, that I think we can apply to all professional writing, are discovery, originality, invention. The professional writer discovers some aspect of the world and invents out of the speech of his time some particularly apt and original way of putting it down on paper.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“The reason American cars don’t sell anymore is that they have forgotten how to design the American Dream. What does it matter if you buy a car today or six months from now, because cars are not beautiful. That’s why the American auto industry is in trouble: no design, no desire.”
—Karl Lagerfeld (b. 1938)