The song was an elegy for Neil Young's first car (which he nicknamed "Mort"), a 1948 Buick Roadmaster hearse that died in 1965 when its transmission blew in Blind River, Ontario. Mort was a different vehicle from the 1953 Pontiac hearse, nicknamed Mort 2, that Richie Furay, traveling with Stills, saw Young driving in a Hollywood traffic jam in 1966 that led to the formation of Buffalo Springfield.
