Postwar Studebakers

uplanderguy

Funny you ask. Pic was taken for a 2016 article in the national club magazine. Sadly, he recently found out he is seriously ill and is in the process of listing all four for sale as a package deal for $32K. They haven't been in the club magazine yet but supposedly will be. He said he wouldn't think twice about climbing into any of them and driving 100 miles today.

sda

uplanderguy said:

Funny you ask. Pic was taken for a 2016 article in the national club magazine. Sadly, he recently found out he is seriously ill and is in the process of listing all four for sale as a package deal for $32K. They haven't been in the club magazine yet but supposedly will be. He said he wouldn't think twice about climbing into any of them and driving 100 miles today.

Sorry to learn about his health and his need to sell.

uplanderguy

Yes. He started chemo two days ago and is maintaining a positive attitude and his usual sense of humor. He has other old cars as well and is trying to not have the family stuck with all that.

sda

I shared these pictures about 5 years ago and recently came across these. Sharp truck.

fintail

If those white cars are decent, 32K for the lot sounds like a cool deal. Hopefully a Stude fan picks them up, instant collection.

uplanderguy

sda, the pickup is a '49-53. Pretty smooth styling I think.

I've seen the cars, but not too closely. The convertible is the best he says, then the Wagonaire, then the hardtop, then the sedan, for condition.

uplanderguy

Interesting car and post in the "Base Models Only" FB page:

Jim Duden
19h
·
August, 1965 I was looking for an inexpensive 2nd car and spotted this ad in the Classifieds, offering a 1964 Studebaker Challenger with 1,500 miles on it. The Challenger name was used by Studebaker for one year only on their base model. This car was won by the original owner in a church raffle and was as base as could be.it had only one option, a heater, in Studebaker terminology, "Climatizer", priced at $79.95!. Stick shift, no seat belts, no outside mirrors. No radio, although I later had one installed. No one wanted to buy this car and I wound up getting it for $800!

uplanderguy

Very hard to see in this pic, but this car should have, and I think does, a "Studebaker" script up high on the right side of the decklid.

uplanderguy

I'd have bought that car in a heartbeat! LOL

The Lark Challenger was only built in South Bend, not Hamilton, so this car was built between August and December 20, 1963.

fintail

No seatbelts is what catches my eye - I thought those were mandatory in 1964. Although maybe for production year cars, which that one apparently predates.

Makes the 68 Fairlane my dad bought when I was in high school seem posh - it was also exceedingly basic, but at least had a V8, mirror, and a radio. Maybe nothing else though, 3 on the tree, manual steering and brakes, small hubcaps, and was white on white to boot. He loved that thing.

uplanderguy

All four of my Studebakers ('63, '64, and two '66's) have had factory seatbelts. The build sheet for my '63, below, shows them which makes me think they were optional then. For some reason I've heard that Studebaker was the first to offer seat belts as standard equipment, but in hindsight I wonder if that was 'first to offer seatbelts from the factory in all models'. I dunno. My '66 build sheet, second below, shows the rear belts were omitted (and they still aren't there, LOL). What's the benefit of that?!

I've seen new '64 Challengers advertised in newspapers for about $1,600, so they were indeed strippers.

uplanderguy

Was his '68 Fairlane a coupe or sedan?

I remember what I thought at the time was a unique styling feature of those cars inside--the four, round, tunnelled instrument pods built into the upper pad of the instrument panel.

uplanderguy

Upon cleaning my office, stumbled upon a book that talks about the post-Egbert last few years at Studebaker. Here's a page, fin, talking about the M-B partnership in those days. I think it's interesting and not probably at all the public perception about it. That said, Burlingame was a bean-counter, twenty years older than Egbert was, had come over from Packard, and who regularly shot new product and marketing ideas down with "we have to reduce all costs and expenses first", sigh.

Some Studebaker execs went over to M-B North America after the divestiture. Studebaker lost a lot of dealers between Dec. '63, the shutdown of South Bend assembly, and March '66, the shutdown of assembly, period. There is some evidence that that was management's plan.

fintail

Sedan. White on white, I think a dark grey dash paid, white headliner of course, maybe grey carpets. It had a somewhat striking look to it with all the white, and I think it was on 1" whitewalls. I remember the dash pods (and the blank one for a clock, IIRC). It was a very clean ~60K mile car.

Interesting MB bit. I wonder if MB itself was wanting free reign - by 1964 they were developing V8s, which were launched in normal production cars by the 1969 model year, at the behest of the American market which didn't want a 6 in a really high end car (all but the top fintail sedans weren't terribly expensive, although the coupes and cabrios were dear). From that point, the brand really took off, and maybe MB knew it needed to manage alone.

uplanderguy said:

Was his '68 Fairlane a coupe or sedan?

I remember what I thought at the time was a unique styling feature of those cars inside--the four, round, tunnelled instrument pods built into the upper pad of the instrument panel.

ab348

It almost seemed as if with all the negative things that happened with S-P in those years that all they could see were problems. Imagine what the distribution rights to M-B would be worth today! If they were hearing negative comments from their dealers about M-B, maybe it was partly because of the dealers themselves.

fintail

At that time, the effort and money needed to both sell and service were probably seen as more of a distraction than it was worth. Wait a decade, and that distribution network would be quite valuable, as MB was suddenly in the business of selling plenty of $15-20K cars instead of a relative handful of $5-10K cars.

I find it all interesting in a weird coincidence way, it's almost like MB eventually took the market position Packard occupied, and Stude was involved with both.

ab348 said:

It almost seemed as if with all the negative things that happened with S-P in those years that all they could see were problems. Imagine what the distribution rights to M-B would be worth today! If they were hearing negative comments from their dealers about M-B, maybe it was partly because of the dealers themselves.

uplanderguy

Agreed, fin.

I think an immediate problem M-B would have had when Stude got out, was that they immediately lost several hundred sales outlets in the U.S. I am personally aware of at least a few Stude dealers who had sold M-B who apparently M-B North America signed up as the new company or division, though, and stayed with M-B over a number of years.

In some general old-car articles over the years, I've seen that "only the best dealers" got M-B, but I'm not convinced of that. My hometown dealer was small, and locals tell me it was a good place to do business and had a good Service Dept.--my dealer friend said his Dad had long-said that "...in a small town you can't get away with treating people poorly" and that's of course right. But, I'm aware of a tiny dealer in Barberton, OH who had been a Packard dealer first and got Studebaker in the mid-'50's, who got M-B, when a larger Stude dealer six or seven miles away did not.

I think if you were willing to buy signage, tools, manuals, and training, you probably got the M-B franchise in those years. According to the Stude Museum archives, my hometown dealer got in at 10/17/57, which I believe is pretty darn close to the front end.

I wonder, too, only that, if original Packard dealers who added Studebaker were more likely to get awarded the M-B franchise in an area. My hometown dealer signed with Studebaker in '26, Packard in '41, dropped or got dropped by Packard in around '50, then got them again with the '55 model year though.

My hometown dealer sent their head mechanic to NYC for M-B school for a matter of weeks. He'd take the train out, go to class for a week, bring a new M-B back for the dealership to sell, work a week, and repeat for several weeks. My dealer friend said this fellow was a strong M-B mechanic and they did M-B service work in a generally wide area, even from the bigger city of Sharon about 15 miles south.

The dealer in Moline, OH, which I talked about last week after getting back from South Bend, was a small-town dealer but was bigger than my hometown dealer. He did not add M-B.

My hometown dealer friend told me once that M-B "dropped us". Not sure if that was at the end of the Stude agreement, or if the new M-B divsion didn't add him.

Not that this means anything, but between 8/4/65 and 11/27/65, their service invoices dropped M-B.

uplanderguy

fin and I spoke about this previously, but the Stude Museum often has small sub-displays of non-Studebaker cars, to keep locals coming. They could and should do the M-B cars Stude sold in that '57-65 time frame. Might be tough to get a string of good, authentic ones out there, who knows. But I'd make a special trip for that.

fintail

I bet that's it - under Stude, if you want to pay and do the work, you got the MB franchise. It was all about getting exposure, and the products were relatively cheaper and easier to sell. Under MB, I suspect the size of the town/metro area along with the quality of the facility were key, as the home office wanted to move the brand upward. I can't speak to what things are/were like back east, but in the PNW, the smallest town/metro I can think of that had/has a MB dealer going back to the 70s are Yakima and Bellingham, each probably around 80K people then. I think they all came up from new franchises or sprouted out of multi line foreign car dealers. The original Seattle dealer building was a Packard dealer way back around 1910, but I don't know if there was a direct line from Packard to MB. The rest as far as I know were new dealers or foreign dealers expanding - I am pretty sure the Spokane MB dealer was born from a general foreign car dealer too.

In the 50s and 60s, many MBs weren't terribly expensive - kind of middle to moderate prices. A fintail like mine was maybe in the low-mid 5K range. Coupes and cabrios were generally 7500-10K. By the late 70s, the cheapest MB was around 15K, and it was basic, a 240D with a vinyl interior, single mirror, 4 speed manual, etc (but relentless build quality and promise of an infinite service life if maintained, not to mention huge resale). An SL or gas S-class then was more like 35-40K - would have been hard to sell many of those in small town USA).

A Stude era MB exhibit would be cool, and I think most Stude fans would appreciate it. Easy to find nice coupes and open cars, but sedans will be a little harder to find, not many highly restored fintails and pontons out there. The museum would probably want to network with MBCA and see what could be loaned for an exhibition.

uplanderguy

RE.: The strippo '64 Challenger photo above--owner told me it was Laguna Blue, the light metallic blue that year. I wouldn't have guessed that from the photo.

uplanderguy

Would've looked largely like this:

uplanderguy

I've posted these before, but since it's October, here's a couple fall photos from some years back, of my '63 Lark Daytona Skytop.

ab348

Not quite postwar, but found this in a Vintage Toronto FB group and it might be of interest.

texases

The Starbucks of its day! One on almost every corner...

uplanderguy

Thanks, Greg. That was some saturation!

uplanderguy

Just back from Hershey. Several Studes in the show, but I really like this car and it was in the HPOF (Preservation) class. I do know the owner. It's a '64 Avanti, supercharged, 4-speed, and about 90 from the last serial number. Nice-looking bias-ply tires too. Only 809 '64 Avantis built between August and December '63.

uplanderguy

I always remember a guy writing in the national club magazine, that dragging a wet chamois over the curved portion of the lower rear quarter, behind the rear wheel opening, was almost a s**ual experience, LOL.

imidazol97

I came across a reference to the Studebaker Dictator model. However the reference is to a Pre WWII model. It was in Hemmings Classic Cars.


There's a song about "Antique '32 Studebaker Dictator Coupe"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BufpK3Y008

Song must have been before my time (LOL) as I don't remember it at all.

uplanderguy

My brother-in-law has a two-tone green '27 Dictator sedan.

I'm told that Dictator was the entry-level series, followed by Commander, followed by President--at least until somewhere in the '30's that someone at South Bend determined that 'Dictator' was not a positive, LOL.

thebean

I’m surprised they even approved the Dictator name at all. Even back then, it surely wasn’t a good thing. Kind of like naming a car “The Putin” today. ☹️

texases

More on the Dictator and its name:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studebaker_Dictator

imidazol97

The mention of the modern song about the '32 Studebaker Dictator was mentioned in a letters section in HCC. The reference was to an earlier article about "What's in a Name" in HCC.

"Dictator in 1927 meant "one who dictates or determines popular opinion or fashion, such as an influencer would today." So naming a vehicle "dictator" would be a positive thing. As has happened with many words, the meaning has changed in the current era.

Not Studebaker, but related so I'll add it.
I attended the Central Ohio Oldsmobile Club annual gathering in Polaris (Columbus) a couple weeks ago. I saw a 1936 Oldsmobile. Beautiful. Reminds me of the Dictator I see in pictures. Jaunty. A gentleman, who owns a beautiful Oldsmobile 1980 98 convertible (one of two made he tells me) and also owns a couple of Rivieras, said his one wish is to own a 1936 Oldsmobile like the one at the show.

He's an older guy, so may not make it. But his convertible is a car I lust after because of its cinnabar color with the rich leather brown seats. I've seen it for 5 years or so now and I wear my cinnabar Landsend T-shirt so that I match

1936 Oldsmobile Sports Coupe


1980 Oldsmobile 98 Regency convertible custom

ab348

I had no idea somebody had done convertible conversions on that vintage of Ninety-Eights.

imidazol97

ab348 said:

I had no idea somebody had done convertible conversions on that vintage of Ninety-Eights.

Neither did I. I had a 1977 Cutlass Supreme Brogham and loved the big Oldsmobiles. My boss bought a 1978 Olds 98 after riding in my '77 going to a football game--same colors.

First time I saw this 1980 Olds, I went home and tried to look it up in the brochures, but I couldn't find it. Then I realized it was a custom. I believe the gentleman said it was a Miami company that did it. And the other one they did that year is white. I don't think he said an interior color, but I'd assume it was the same leather color. That would be pretty.

Going to the Oldsmobile only car shows I must get the same feeling Uplander gets when he goes to Studebaker shows with his car and when he goes to the Studebaker historic headquarters. The folks at the Olds show love to tell you about their car. Standing in the middle of 80 or so authentic, mostly original Oldsmobiles is great. A step back in time.

fintail

thebean said:

I’m surprised they even approved the Dictator name at all. Even back then, it surely wasn’t a good thing. Kind of like naming a car “The Putin” today. ☹️

Chevy had a "Confederate" at roughly the same time, discontinued by 1930 IIRC.

ab348

thebean said:

I’m surprised they even approved the Dictator name at all. Even back then, it surely wasn’t a good thing. Kind of like naming a car “The Putin” today. ☹️

Heck, these days some people would probably be offended by the President model name.

Michaell

ab348 said:

thebean said:

I’m surprised they even approved the Dictator name at all. Even back then, it surely wasn’t a good thing. Kind of like naming a car “The Putin” today. ☹️

Heck, these days some people would probably be offended by the President model name.

Don’t some models have a premier trim? How do you Canadians feel about that?

Happy Thanksgiving, BTW

uplanderguy

I looked at four Studebaker Avantis at Hershey in the show this year. The most authentic IMHO was the one I posted above. Two others had the mirrors out on the fenders, which I can't stand (although I have seen some factory photos with them there, as well as on the door). A big 'looks' thing I like about Avantis is when new, anyway, they had a nose-down attitude. I know that as years go by, springs are changed, etc., and the 'look' probably depends on where you park, LOL, but I always thought this pic from a few years ago shows the way I think the factory 'attitude' was. I like it this way.

uplanderguy

This sleeper was at the Hershey show last Friday. We just last week here were talking 1964 Lark Challengers, the bottom-level Studebaker in '64 only. This car had a Granatelli-built R4 (non-supercharged; dual quads) that was bought from Granatelli's back then. Granatelli was a Stude VP as head of Paxton Products Division at that time. The car was originally built as a six. I like 'sleepers' although I could nitpick a couple things that bugged me--had NOS 1963 upholstery instead of '64, and had the '66-only woodgrain trim on the dash.



I'm biased of course, but I think the basic lines of the car still look good today.

texases

Aw, no engine pics?

uplanderguy

Here you go. The valve covers are aftermarket; originals would've been just plain chrome which I'd prefer...a lot. 280 hp in R4 configuration. The supercharged R3 put out a conservative number of 335. Only one R4 was installed in a Lark-type at South Bend on the production line, but R3 and R4 engines were available for purchase from Studebaker via Granatelli's shop even after the assembly lines in South Bend shut down.

uplanderguy

Came across this fall '65 pic of my hometown dealer, whom I became good friends with in around 1990. He looks a bit concerned, which is probably appropriate in the life of a Studebaker dealer in late '65! His wife was a neat lady and friend, and I also became friends with his son and one of his daughters in this pic. That Chevy is a used car; there was a row of them on that side of the building.

texases

Great pic, and story behind the pic.

imidazol97

Guess what this building used to be decades ago? 4040 Spring Grove Avenue, Cincinnati, OH

There were 7 dealers in N Ky and Cincinnati at that time, listed at the bottom of the newspaper ad. Interesting.

kyfdx

@imidazol97 I think that might have been a Honda dealer in the early '80s. If not, they were right in that same block. My girlfriend bought an '81 Civic, there.

kyfdx

It's funny... my local independent mechanic is in a building that was a Nash dealer in the early '50s.

imidazol97

Interesting.

imidazol97

Was the portion of Spring Grove and the Dooley Bypass for Spring Grove that was closer to Colerain an auto sales strip in those old days?

I bought my 77 Cutlass at Behler Oldsmobile which is east of the Studebaker place by half a mile of so on the other side of the cemetery and I know Superior Honda is a 1/4 mile east of that along with Kia or Hyundai and then the Woody Ford dealership.

I recall going to a tire store near to the Studebaker store for service on problematic General tires on the 77 Cutlass.

To bring this string back to topic, I did go to the car show at Spring Grove Cemetery last week and there were only 2 Studebakers there. I believe both were Avantis.

kyfdx

imidazol97 said:

Was the portion of Spring Grove and the Dooley Bypass for Spring Grove that was closer to Colerain an auto sales strip in those old days?

I bought my 77 Cutlass at Behler Oldsmobile which is east of the Studebaker place by half a mile of so on the other side of the cemetery and I know Superior Honda is a 1/4 mile east of that along with Kia or Hyundai and then the Woody Ford dealership.

I recall going to a tire store near to the Studebaker store for service on problematic General tires on the 77 Cutlass.

Yeah, there were a couple of dealers, back then. Now that I look at the map, the Honda dealer might have been a few blocks East, before where Blue Rock cuts off of Spring Grove.

texases

It hadn't registered that was in Cincy. I grew up 4 miles from that dealer, in North College Hill.