Puerto Rican taxi driver Victor Perez Cardona didn't want a traditional wake.
He traded the typical coffin for his beloved beige cab. Propped up in the front seat, he gripped the taxi's steering wheel while wearing a hat and tie. A wooden cross hung from his rearview mirror. A floral wreath lay in his back seat, his final fare.
Hundreds of mourners stood outside his Toyota Corolla parked at a funeral home on Sunday to bid farewell to the 73-year-old who died of cancer. Perez Cardona had driven the taxi for the past 15 years and was known in the town of Aguas Buenas as "Vitín the Driver," according to El Nuevo Dia.
Some wake attendees climbed into the cab to sit alongside Perez Cardona one last time, his daughter, Generosa Perez Torres, told The Associated Press. Representatives from multiple funeral homes even came to see the styled wake, she told El Nuevo Dia.
"He was a people person and I told him to [have his wake] in your own taxi. It's never been done before here," Perez Torres said, adding that her father was a bus driver before he became a cabbie.
This isn't the first time an unusual wake was held in Puerto Rico. Last year, a dead boxer stood in the corner of a ring, wearing sunglasses and a yellow hood. That same year, an 80-year-old woman wore her wedding dress while sitting in her favorite red-cushioned rocking chair.
Perez was buried Monday.