Dotty's grand old lady with a great appetite

ROGER MORONEY
DURING the mid-1930s in America, the price of a gallon of gasoline was about half what it cost to buy a burger.
So automobile makers did not extend their slide rules to factor in the cost of running great brutes of engines in equally great brutes of cars.
And back then, size did matter when it came to attracting a tyre-kicker's interest as he wandered around a showroom filled with, say, Packards.
The Packard was fairly typical of what was emerging from Detroit - great in-line and V-configuration eight-cylinder motors, and even 12-cylinder jobs, and enough steel in the bodywork to build about a thousand small Japanese sedans. They caught the eye back in the 1930s, and still have the ``wow' factor to do it today.
Just ask Lower Hutt funeral director Simon Manning, who has arrived in Napier to attend a national funeral directors' conference ... which just happens to run into Art Deco Weekend.
He arrived for the conference with a large companion called Dotty whom he met over the internet a couple of years ago. He'd been looking for her for years, and it was a call from a fellow funeral director which led to him making the first approach.
Dotty (named after Mr Manning's mother Dorothy, who shares the same birthday) is a 1936 Packard hearse. It had been put up for sale by an elderly funeral director in Texas and Mr Manning was quickly in touch - for it was exactly what he had been seeking for his business.
A deal was struck (he got it for about NZ$57,000) and the great car was then packed into a very large container for the voyage downunder. On Christmas Day 2005, it arrived in Wellington.
``We live overlooking the harbour and through binoculars I saw the ship coming in.'
With a smile he said he was like an excited boy who got what Santa had promised.
Having been fully restored in the `70s and well maintained, it started straight away, and after all the road-going legalities were sorted, Dotty was put to work for the Harbour City funeral home.
``It is constantly in use. People see it and say they want it for the funeral they are planning.'
As a purpose-built hearse, it has only been used for short trips, so no surprise to see only 29,000 original miles (46,600km) on the clock.
Carbon footprint? More a tank track, really. It does about eight miles (12.8km) to the gallon (3.7 litres). Mr Manning said the size of the Packard (which has no indicators, rear-view mirrors, seat belts or power steering) was slightly intimidating at first.
``But your confidence builds every time you get in it.'
While he will return to Lower Hutt on Friday, Dotty will stay in Napier for a few extra days as one of the weekend's most startling Art Deco attractions.
Local funeral director Paul Dunstall will look after and drive the great car when it's not on display outside his Bower St office.
At the mention of the words ``parking it' he took a deep intake of breath and appeared to go pale. Understandable really. It's just over 6m long.