Postwar Studebakers

uplanderguy

That's true about the '64's, but I don't like the blunt front end styling as much as the concave on the '63. The roofline of the '64 hardtops doesn't do a whole lot for me. I don't dislike them, I just don't like them as well as a '64 Studebaker hardtop. Personal taste only.

I feel Rambler instrument panels of the time are kind-of goofy/'googie' too. MHO only.

ab348

Thinking back to when I was a kid, Rambler/AMC really wasn't on our family's car radar in the '60s. We were aware of them of course, but there was only a single dealer in the area who operated out of what amounted to a large gas station that had been converted to a smallish showroom/service department. I remember convincing Dad to go look at a '69 Ambassador there and it was OK, but I don't think he took it to be a serious contender. Bringing out the Javelin/AMX helped their image at the time, and the Hornet was a decent compact, but they never really contended in the midsize/fullsize class in the '70s.

uplanderguy

This 'Rambler' talk reminds me of something. I have an 83-year-old friend, spry as all get out, looks younger, and is a lifetime Studebaker guy. He currently owns a '64 GT Hawk R1, a '64 Daytona convertible, a '64 Champ pickup, a '57 Transtar pickup, and a number of parts cars. As a young man he worked at Mack's Auto Sales, Stude dealer in nearby Akron.

He said to me once, "Do you think part of Studebaker's lack of success had anything to do with the funny-sounding name?".

I admit it does sound funny, and is a person's name, but probably no funnier when you think about it, than "Oldsmobile".

But I always kind-of recoiled at the name "Rambler" as just trying hard to be cute. I'm glad they went to 'AMC' as a brand.

But then I never understood the model name 'Duster' either. I believe we've talked about that before. But it's hard for me to think in a meeting a bunch of people agreed on that name! What do I know as the car was very successful.

My Stude friend has many stories about working at Mack's. Mrs. Mack was rather stern, a good teacher, and didn't hold a grudge if he goofed up, but he tells the story that a customer had his Golden Hawk in for service and Mrs. Mack asked my friend to drive him home in a new Gran Turismo Hawk on the lot--you know the reasoning. My friend did and when he got back he told her, "Man, I want one of those". She sternly replied, "You can't afford one". He tells it a lot better than I can write it.

sda

No way would dad consider anything but GM or Ford. With GM he’s wasn’t a Chevy or Buick fan but preferred Olds, Cadillac, and for Pontiac only the Grand Prix. He considered a new LTD in 72 but mom and dad liked the smaller yet reasonably roomy 72 Cutlass Supreme 4dr hardtop better and is one of mom’s favorite cars. It didn’t hurt that the Cutlass was a demo with 2k on it, was heavily optioned up and was less expensive than the LTD. The Cutlass replaced their much larger 69 Olds 98.

uplanderguy

In my lifetime, my Dad owned one Ford and the rest, Chevys. I'd know him to very rarely look at Pontiacs, but after our '62 Fairlane, he never seriously looked at Ford again. Best dealer in our town was the Chevy dealer, pretty widely agreed.

fintail

My dad was an old time Ford guy, having many in the 50s 60s and 70s, and the older cars he got into during the 90s were all Fords. He wasn't exclusive though, among Fords he had since I was born also having a Horizon, S10 Blazer (which turned him off of GM), Grand Caravan, T&C, Dodge truck, and later a Datsun as his last hobby car. The Datsun was the only foreign car he owned. My mom was also a Ford driver for ages, but a Taurus irked her, and she went to Toyota and didn't look back. Her Camry is quickly approaching 20 years old and has relatively low mileage, there's a good chance it might be the car she keeps til she stops driving, as she has expressed no desire for something new.

uplanderguy

Coming up at Mecum Harrisburg auction soon. I hate the aftermarket radio, and the Ford inside mirror (admittedly the original Avanti inside mirror is tiny), and I know the redline tires came later but I still like them. I'm pretty smitten overall with this car:

https://www.mecum.com/lots/PA0722-517473/1963-studebaker-avanti-coupe/?fbclid=IwAR2CMsLvxj36q5F_nZv8Hv_NEIefDRdUUURzHEL_afZPyGLRzpY_pBPQnNg

fintail

Buy it!

bhill2

uplanderguy said:

Coming up at Mecum Harrisburg auction soon. I hate the aftermarket radio, and the Ford inside mirror (admittedly the original Avanti inside mirror is tiny), and I know the redline tires came later but I still like them. I'm pretty smitten overall with this car:

https://www.mecum.com/lots/PA0722-517473/1963-studebaker-avanti-coupe/?fbclid=IwAR2CMsLvxj36q5F_nZv8Hv_NEIefDRdUUURzHEL_afZPyGLRzpY_pBPQnNg

I've always wondered; could the automatic handle the supercharged engine? Did they use a beefier trans in those?

uplanderguy

I never heard anything about the trans not handling the blower. All Avantis used the Powershift water-cooled trans, PRND21 quadrant and could be held in second.

fintail

Seattle, 1963 - always seems to be one in the background somewhere:

uplanderguy

I've posted this before, but I blew it up a bit, which accounts for the fuzziness. President Sherwood Egbert's '64 Avanti R3 and a familiar-looking fintail out front of the Studebaker Administration Building, 635 S. Main St., South Bend, Indiana, fall 1963.

fintail

That's a memorable one. I wonder who was driving my car.

uplanderguy

Pretty obvious an exec I'd say, to park right behind Egbert.

A lot has changed in that neighborhood since then, and not for the better, but even now I wouldn't park there, the way cars zip down S. Main St. there.

I think I told you this, but that '60 Ponton was no longer across the street when I was out there in May.

I love South Bend. It's the only place I've been where everybody knows what a Studebaker is. I used to meet old guys at the meets who'd say "I put the rear fender on your car", but not too many of those guys around any more.

uplanderguy

Sorry for the photobucket stamp, but here's the same car at auction, I think 2009:

uplanderguy

Here's a period pic of Egbert's Avanti. I wonder what car had the "E1" plate.

uplanderguy

Nice '65 sliding-roof Daytona Wagonaire. Photo recently taken.

ab348

The current (October 2022) issue of Collectible Automobile has an article about the Sarasota (FL) Classic Car Museum. The article is a bit of a snoozer and the museum sounds like it has a very odd assortment of stuff, but they included this picture and paragraph on The Grateful Dead's Studebaker pickup:

uplanderguy

Thanks for posting. I was not aware of the Grateful Dead's Stude. Pretty sure that's a 3/4 ton.

Stude concealed their step inside the door, unusual then.

thebean

@ab348, I subscribed to Collectible Automobile for a year, and I found most of the articles to be pretty boring. There was so much minutiae about car lines, such as the many options available by year. The amount of data just gave me tired-head. I appreciated the few number of advertisements and it was a pretty good value, but I found myself skipping through at least half of the articles.

Is that your experience, or am I an outlier?

uplanderguy

I'd buy it on the newsstand every so often. Too cheap to subscribe! I did like all the color, and I liked how they seemed to have access to designers and 'inside stories' the other mags didn't seem to have. Being a fan of original (or at least, authentically-restored) cars, I'm often left thinking "Is this the best car they could photograph?", but easier said than done I'm sure.

ab348

I started buying CA in the early '90s and thanks to back issues I bought early on, have most of their entire run. It has changed over the years as the writers they had in the '90s and '00s have aged out and new ones arrived. The earlier writers were far more likely to have access to some of the people at the manufacturers who were involved in the cars they were writing about, or personal experience themselves (I'm thinking of the late Jeff Godshall, who was a designer at Chrysler back in the '60s and '70s, who wrote a lot of their Mopar articles, and people like Michael Lamm, who was an editor at a few diffrent car magazines back in the '60s). The newer articles have less of that sort of narrative, and I'm guessing finding stories about something designed in the '40s or '50s can be very tough, so I suppose they tend to rely on stats. But stats do nothing for me generally.

They did improve over the years in some aspects. Early on many of the pictures were very tiny, and they have gotten away from that. But one thing they stopped doing which I wish they continued was that they used to print an "available colors" chart in a lot of their early articles, which they no longer do. I can appreciate that it's hard to fill so many pages every month but I feel that the "Car Spotter" section is usually too long, and the segments on model cars and literature do little for me.

thebean

@ab348 and @uplanderguy, thanks very much for your impressions of CA. Very informative.

Avihaa

During the early 1930s, Studebaker was hit hard by the Great Depression and in March 1933 it was forced into bankruptcy. (In April 2009, Chrysler became the first major American automaker since Studebaker to declare bankruptcy.)

uplanderguy

Yes, it was called 'Receivership' but I don't know if that's exactly the same thing or not. They recovered very strongly with the economy 1939 Champion, and came out of WWII the strongest of all the independents. As with the others, the fifties were hard, but Studebaker hung on building cars a decade later than most the others.

uplanderguy

From FB today...'64 Avanti. My favorite view of an Avanti. Largest rear glass in the industry then, and hey, it's one piece!

uplanderguy

Employees coming out of the plant on Dec. 20, 1963, the last day the assembly line operated in the U.S. Photo was shown in papers all over the U.S. Flag at half-mast for JFK.

uplanderguy

RE.: Exhausts on the Avanti two pics above look ridiculous in hindsight....not only too long, but also too big around.

thebean

They really do look too long, don’t they? Was this just an error in the restoration or was this the way they were when they left the factory (hard to imagine it was)?

uplanderguy

Error in replacement/restoration. The two photos a bit higher up, show how the factory exhaust looked.

uplanderguy

Came across this old photo. My daughters helping wash our Lark for the July 4th car show in town. You can't see the white fabric sunroof from this angle. The badge on the front fender read "Avanti Powered", 'Avanti' being written in the same script as on Avanti cars. Those are actually year-appropriate Studebaker accessory mudflaps in the front.

uplanderguy

The pic reminds me that it had the optional tinted glass in all windows. There was no blue band at the top of the windshield a la GM at the time, but the glass throughout was not unlike looking through a small glass Coke bottle.

fintail

uplanderguy said:

The pic reminds me that it had the optional tinted glass in all windows. There was no blue band at the top of the windshield a la GM at the time, but the glass throughout was not unlike looking through a small glass Coke bottle.

Was it tinted blue?

MB did blue and green tint back in the day.

uplanderguy

It was a light green.

uplanderguy

My 27.6K mile '66 Cruiser at a cruise-in last night. That '59 or '60 Vette next to it had an engine that stuck out from the hood a good foot or more, sigh.

imidazol97

uplanderguy said:

My 27.6K mile '66 Cruiser at a cruise-in last night. That '59 or '60 Vette next to it had an engine that stuck out from the hood a good foot or more, sigh.

Some Studebakers have that R7 engine option as well.

imidazol97

Do you like Presidents? Nice Daytona next to it.
Enlarges nicely, and lots of orphans can be seen in the background.

thebean

@imidazol97, that President is just like the one owned by the lady who stayed with me during the day when I was young. Hers was sort of an ox blood and white color. The Stude dealer in our town closed in the early 60’s, but a couple of the mechanics worked at a muffler shop which is where she took it for all maintenance and repair. She went into a nursing home in around 1982, but drove it until then. I never knew what happened to it. It probably had less than 100K miles. It probably went to the junkyard. ☹️ What I remember most is how solid it was and how robust the interior was - no rips at all.

uplanderguy

The R7 option, LOL!

RE.: The President--I do like those. I'm mostly into sixties, and especially '63-64, Studes. I have seen that black '63 Lark before.

That's a somewhat unusual '56 in that it's the short-wheelbase President, as opposed to the President Classic. I like the taillights that are like flares.

Here's a pic of that model new at my hometown dealer's.

fintail

That pilgrim looks absolutely thrilled.

uplanderguy

Thiel College student! LOL

uplanderguy

Saw this pic on an Erie Lackawanna railroad page I follow on FB yesterday. My hometown station. Pic from 1975, five years after passenger service stopped. I'm 64 but I left out of this station twice, to NYC as a kid. Love the sign, "Greenville, Home of Thiel College".

fintail

Lark article in the latest issue of Hagerty Driver's Club (image may zoom enough for the text to be readable):

uplanderguy

Geez, I get that magazine but hadn't opened it yet!

I can tell that that is Bob Merlis' Lark, which has authenticity issues, but he's still a Lark lover. He's the guy who wrote the terrific "The Studey Zone" article for Car and Driver in 1983, about that year's South Bend International Meet.

uplanderguy

Just read the article. I largely agree with most of it, and especially agree with the line in the Table of Contents about the car "...has aged gracefully".

The Brooks Stevens designs of '62 and later at Stude to me bear the hallmarks of an industrial designer, as opposed to "STYLIST!!". Hence, the styling in and out is simple and functional. I saw a '64 Falcon Futura convertible a couple days ago. To me, it's a chiseled mess in comparison to a '64 Daytona convertible. MHO only of course.

uplanderguy

Cute little '59 Lark on FB this morning. Original dealer sticker showing the place also sold M-B.

fintail

uplanderguy said:

Geez, I get that magazine but hadn't opened it yet!

I can tell that that is Bob Merlis' Lark, which has authenticity issues, but he's still a Lark lover. He's the guy who wrote the terrific "The Studey Zone" article for Car and Driver in 1983, about that year's South Bend International Meet.

Oops, didn't mean to post a spoiler, wasn't aware you got it too

That old dealer sticker is pretty cool, can't be many of those around.

imidazol97

fintail said:

Lark article in the latest issue of Hagerty Driver's Club (image may zoom enough for the text to be readable):

Here's a convertible from Greenville yesterday Rollin' 50s annual cruise. Hundreds of cars, very few customs in the mix, mostly classics.

Pretty as a picture. 1960 in Joxquil yellow?

imidazol97

And a 1950 Commander in Aero Blue. Wheel covers are similar but not authentic?

imidazol97

And I love the 1963 Commander in Lombard green over Chippewa green.
My day was made of the Studebakers.