T-Pain’s ‘91 Cadillac Hearse “Dolphin Killer” Is the Craziest Celebrity Car Ever

Today, when even Z-listers with a good line of credit can afford several new cars of the most fancy kind, it’s more than difficult to stand out. T-Pain never had a problem with that.
T-Pain, real name Faheem Rasheed Najm, but widely known as “the guy with the Autotune,” is a famous rapper, songwriter and producer. He released his debut album in 2005 and lists six records in his discography, but he’s also been able to make more or less successful forays into other areas, like recording and acting.

Today, many rappers use some form of Autotune and, when they do, they’d better whisper a “thank-you” to T-Pain, since he’s the guy who made it into a thing. In an interview last year, the rapper admitted he suffered depression and reached the lowest point in his career in 2013 when, in a conversation with Usher, he was informed that his Autotune records “f***ed up music for real singers.”

On the bright side, a lot of Autotune buys you a lot of fancy and outrageous cars. T-Pain is perhaps one of the most eccentric and eclectic car collectors among celebrities, and that’s saying a lot. An exact figure for the number of vehicles he’s owned along the years doesn’t exist, but he did show a handful of them to Esquire in the summer of 2021, for an episode of Curated. Not one of them holds a candle to his Dolphin Killer hearse, arguably the most bonkers and awesome celebrity car of all time. Photo: YouTube / TWAINE84

T-Pain’s first car was a 1984 Ford Taurus but, by the time he started working on his third album in 2008, Thr33 Ringz, he’d already gotten what he called the car of his dreams. It was a hearse and it had a real fiberglass coffin in the back and, without an apparent relation, was meant as some sort of ode for his undying love for the Miami Dolphins. Death and taxes, death and the NFL: there must be some connection that we’re missing, but T-Pain got.

Platinum Motorsports is believed to have customized the hearse for the rapper, starting from a 1991 Cadillac hearse. It was painted in a surprising combination of bright orange and baby blue, and rode on 28-inch wheels. In an interview in 2009, T-Pain said that the vehicle had actually been used as a hearse, and that the biggest challenge with it had been the lingering odor of embalming fluid. “We had to Febreeze the hell out of the car,” he said. “Everyone is afraid of it. But I don t think of it in that way. It’s a car.”

It was a car, indeed, and T-Pain loved it – so much so that he did a full tour for it for his fans, which you will find in the first video at the bottom of the page. The strangest thing about the Dolphin Killer, which the rapper had actually named Danielle Marino, after former Dolphins quarterback Dan Marino, was that it still had a coffin inside.

At the press of a button – “hit that button, microwave oven” – the rear door silently swung open and out came a motorized coffin made of fiberglass, painted in a matching baby blue. Inside was a skeleton (plastic, not of the real kind), wearing New Balance shoes in the same color combination and a massive chain around the neck. On the lid of the coffin, on the inside, were four 19-inch screens. You can’t ride into eternity without some quality content, let’s just agree on that. Photo: YouTube / TWAINE84

The entire vehicle was a party-mobile, coffin aside. There were eight 12-inch speakers on the roof and more on the walls, and T-Pain blasted music as he gloated about his new ride.

Because you can’t keep something as awesome as this all to yourself, T-Pain included the Dolphin Killer in the artwork for the Thr33 Ringz album and a video, and rode it to the Super Bowl in Miami a while later. Its whereabouts are currently unknown, and T-Pain didn’t even mention it in the latest tour of his collection.

Speaking of which, it includes a 1972 Joker-themed Chevrolet Impala, the 1998 F-150 custom known as Catch 22, and a 1994 Honda Accord he calls the Belcord, which he can control by means of a Nintendo controller. T-Pain is clearly a fan of outrageous cars that make no sense, as he puts it. Because they’re fun.