Limos With Stiff Suspensions

Sometimes the stares throw her. Then Lorna Lourenco remembers: Not every mother of two tools around the high desert in a vintage hearse.

Lourenco’s husband and kids were among the shocked three years ago when she traded her Dodge Omni and $500 for a beat-up 1974 Cadillac Fleetwood Miller-Meteor high-top. Now that the hearse count is up to four, the surprise has worn off, and family, friends and neighbors all pitch in to help the Lourencos run Phelan-based Gothic Limos. Clients from L.A. to Las Vegas pay about $500 to stretch out for a night of the living dead.

Lourenco and her husband, David, outfit each with mood music, black lighting and a “slumber chamber.” They and others chauffeur to gothic weddings, cemetery tours and over-the-hill parties. This summer they’ll add tours of locations in the HBO series “Six Feet Under,” which is fueling the rise of hearse chic. “Used to be we’d get the evil eye from everyone but bikers and fringe people,” she said. “But now drivers in BMWs and SUVs give us the thumbs-up.”

Besides the ’74 she calls Baby Doll, the fleet includes an ’86 Cadillac Fleetwood she named the S.S. Goth, a ’62 Caddy called Sixth Sense and a yet-to-be-named ’68 she and her husband recently drove home from Texas. That’s right, Lourenco’s been through the desert in a hearse with no name.

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Gothic Limos, (888) 868-1104, www.gothiclimos.com.