On loan from: JC Knapp, Kearney, NE
Number made: Unknown; limited production
Engine, etc.: Buick Straight 8; 320 cu. in.
This funeral coach was originally in service in Nanty Glo, Pennsylvania, as evidenced by an oil change sticker still present on the car. The current owner purchased it from a private owner in Cincinnati, Ohio. It was titled as a 1938 even though it is a 1939 model. The coach was finished in November, 1938, and thus titled originally as a 1938. The current owner corrected the title to reflect that it is a 1939 model year vehicle.
The A. J. Miller Company began by making horse carriages in 1853; the company went on to manufacture its first wagon for the dead in 1870 or 1871. Production of carriages, wagons and other horse-drawn vehicles continued along with the occasional hearse into the 20th century. By the first half of the 20th century, the A. J. Miller Company had become a world-renowned hearse and carriage builder. Car chassis from Nash, Buick, Cadillac, and others were brought to the factory where employees converted them into hearses, ambulances, hearse/ambulance combinations, florists’ cars, tour buses and other specialty vehicles.
Miller also had a small branch factory in Muncie, Indiana that was established in the 1860s. It was sold in 1878 to two former employees, William Knisley and William H. Knapp, who subsequently moved the firm to Iola, Kansas and renamed it the Iola Carriage Works in 1882.
The firm’s founder and president, A. J. Miller, was also the president of the city’s Bellefontaine Automobile Company. The Bellefontaine was a low production luxury automobile also produced from 1908 – 1916.
In 1914 Maurice Wolfe, owner of Piqua, Ohio’s Meteor Car Company, made a deal with Miller to supply Meteor with professional car bodies with Wolfe furnishing Meteor chassis in return. The first Miller-bodied Meteor was sold in 1915 and the arrangement continued until 1917 when Miller decided to manufacture a complete professional car on their own assembled chassis.
In 1954, Wayne Works of Richmond, Indiana – a large school bus producer – purchased the firm and on March 19, 1956, Wayne announced the acquisition of the A. J. Miller Company. Under the new conglomerate, the company would now be called Miller-Meteor. Manufacturing operations were consolidated at the Meteor plant at 125 Clark Avenue in Piqua. The AJ Miller Co. operated in Bellefontaine until 1960, four years after it merged with the Meteor Co.
Miller-Meteor built exclusively on the Cadillac commercial chassis and the first Miller-Meteor coaches debuted in 1957. The new firm was a success and, in a few years, had captured 50% of the professional car market.
The 1973 EMS Systems Act (PL 93-154) virtually eliminated all passenger car-based ambulance production by 1977 and Miller-Meteor only built 21 ambulances during the year. Only four were built in 1978. By 1979 Miller-Meteor was reduced to a single line of professional vehicles – hearses.
With sales down and prospects dim, the company announced the end of operations on November 1, 1979. There would be no 1980 Miller-Meteor products. The company laid off 252 employees and terminated the contracts of their 34 North American distributors. The rights to the Miller-Meteor name were sold to Collins Industries, Inc. who resurrected it in 1984 for use on a new series of funeral coaches and limousines. In 1993, a competitor, CCE Inc. purchased the Miller-Meteor name and moved production to their Norwalk, Ohio facility. In1999 Superior Holdings, a PNC Company, purchased the name and moved the firm to their Lima, Ohio facility where they continued to market hearses under the Miller-Meteor name into the late 2000’s.
