Edwin's (formerly Neal's) 1959 Eureka-Cadillac
53" Hi-Boy Ambulance

This beautiful ambulance has been (mostly) restored, and sold to a collector in the Netherlands. Click here for more information!

I first saw this ambulance back in 1995. As soon as I saw it, I just had to buy it! When I bought it, my rig was only barely driveable -- the adjacent picture was taken when it was delivered to me on August 1, 1995. I had planned on restoring it myself, but quickly discovered that I was missing one key item -- mechanical aptitude! To my dismay, I also discovered that there are very few repair shops in the Berkeley / Oakland area that will work on any old American cars, let alone one that is over 7 feet tall and nearly 21 feet long!

After letting the car sit around in storage for over two years, I finally bought the (expensive) bullet and decided to have it professional restored. In early September of 1997, I had my rig delivered to Pilgrim's Auto Restorations (aka Pilgrim's Special Interest Autos) in Lakeport, California. As I followed the flatbed truck on the 120-mile trip to Lakeport, I noticed drivers slowing down and staring at my car. One couple even brought out their camera and took a picture of it as they were driving on the freeway! That is one of the main reasons why I bought her -- to attract attention. Also, I've had a fascination for hearses and ambulances for years, and I just love old Cadillacs -- especially the '59s. By the way, if you have a similar interest, be sure to check out the official (and recently updated!) website for the Professional Car Society.

A number of people asked me if I planned to turn the ambulance into yet another replica of Ecto-1. In case you don't know, Ecto-1 was the 1959 Miller-Meteor combination that, in my mind, was the star of the original Ghostbusters movie. To that question, I had only one answer: Not a chance! My plan was always been to restore my rig to its original condition, including repainting it in its original green color. Besides, Ecto-1 was a standard low-top car, which needed extra equipment added on top to make it impressive. This rig is over a foot taller, with 53 inches of headroom in the "passenger" compartment. According to the former chief engineer of Eureka, which went out of business in the early '60s, they only made three rigs like mine in 1959! Each one sold for more than $14,000.

This ambulance was originally used by the Bogota Volunteer First Aid Squad in the town of Bogota, New Jersey. It took me a while to get this information. When I bought the ambulance, it had a sticker from an oil change it received in 1972 in Bergenfield, New Jersey. That was my only clue to where my rig came from. I tried for a couple of years to get more information, but had no luck. Finally, in response to an advertisement in the newsletter for the Association for the Preservation of Historic Ambulances (APHA), another member mailed me copies of a 25-year old brochure from the Bogota Squad -- which included a photograph of the Squad's 1959 Eureka hightop ambulance, and also mentioned that the Squad's first ambulance was a green 1948 Buick.

I was fairly certain that the brochure showed my car, but I needed more proof. Back in 1998, I was contacted by Ray Dwyer, a former member of the Squad (whose grandfather was also in the Squad). Ray confirmed that the Bogota Squad's 1959 ambulance was also green. I also found some pencils from a Bogota funeral home stuck in my car's dashboard. We later visted Ray in Bogota, and Ray showed me the original call sheets from my rig's service in Bogota. Ray plans to make copies of these sheets for my files.

By the way, faded red paint job the ambulance had when I bought it is presumably the handiwork of a previous owner, who owned the ambulance in 1984 and 1985. He was a student who lived in the dorms at Stanford University, and also painted a red "S" on the top. I still don't know how the car got from New Jersey to California. In the pictures on this page, you can see that there was some rust on my ambulance. Unfortunately, the actual amount of rust was much worse than even these pictures show. This delayed the restoration process, but it's finally done!

In June of 1999, my restoration shop completed a three-year, $65,000 restoration of this beautiful ambulance (over a third of that cost was to remediate the rust). The timing was such that the job was completed just about the same time my son Ross was born. Below are the only post-restoration pictures of this car that I have managed to get online.

UPDATE!!!

If you have any information about this vehicle, or have any comments, send email to Edwin Otten.

Check out the Cool '59 Pages -- to see some pix of the most outrageous cars Detroit ever produced!

last modified April 21, 2005