the statement by the funeral home also says something like "we were required to change our silver Mercedes to black for royal protocol" and my first mental image was of them madly spending the last two nights spray painting over one of their silver cars and making every detail black, rather than just adding a black mercedes to their livery at some point in the past year(s)! I'm surprised they usually use silver though, as I always expect funeral corteges to be black for anyone.
I know they don't want to capitalise on this at all, but what's the betting that they'll be inundated in future funerals with people specifically requesting the black hearse (assuming that they keep it and don't add any more black ones to their fleet), rather than one of the silver ones? Not because they/their loved one actually care about the colour of the car, but because that way, they know they'll get to use the same one as the Queen had.
Or would they decommission it afterwards, or maybe keep it in a royal museum?
Also, by the by, I can fully understand why they prefer German cars, but I'm surprised that, if the RF go to the trouble of having a protocol about the colour of the hearse that is used, they don't also insist on it being a British make.