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I like the look of the Studebaker GT Hawks very much. They have a classic look about then that comes from their long wheelbase and the hardtop style. But it is a GT in name only. A GT car is not a long wheelbase American hardtop, whether it be a callled a GT Hawk or a Pontiac GTO.
The Avanti was a much tighter and more manueverable car than the Hawk. It weighed about the same as the Hawk (within 100 pounds) but the weight was down low in the frame. It would outperform the Hawk in every way every day.
The Hawk had a wheelbase of 120.5 inches. The Avanti had a wheelbase of 109.0 inches. Here are wheelbase lengths of some other American performance cars.
1965 Ford Mustang 108.0
1970-80 Camaro/Firebird 108.0
1963-64 Avanti 109.0
1963 Thunderbird 113.0
1963 Buick Riveria 117.0
1966-1970 Dodge Charger 117.0
When Studebaker took its compact Lark and made an Avanti performance car out of it, it blazed a trail that many other automakers followed by building four passenger “pony cars” of very similar size and weight. The Avanti’s contemporaries (Rivera and T-Bird) were longer cars and
outweighed it by 1,000 pounds.
Every Studebaker Avanti made could go at least 120 m.p.h. I drove my R-1 slightly faster than that a couple of times and I quit before it did. That cannot be said of every Mustang, Camaro, Firebird or Charger because they were also sold in ohv, 6 cylinder models.
I do like the Avanti as it's so free of fake 'stuff'. As I've said before, the only thing that bothers me about it is the R1 has no front fender emblem. My eyes are always drawn right there.
set by the R-3 or the experimental Due Cento. There was also an R-2 Avanti present which broke the C-class record set by Mickey Thompson in a Pontiac Catalina a year earlier. That car went more than 150 mph, but that might have happened when Andy Garnatelli took Studebakers to Bonneville the first time in 1962.
Most of the attention is paid to the second time Andy Granatelli took Studebakers to Bonneville in 1963. Here are two interesting articles about that event.
http://www.studebaker-info.org/Magandart/hmn1209/hmn1209.html and
http://www.studebaker-info.org/Magandart/cl1263/cl1263.html
The point is that although the R-3 got most of the attention, an R-2 Studebaker Avanti was a very fast car too and although a driver could not expect to go 170 mph in one, he\she could expect to go 130 m.p.h. with a rear end gear ratio that was more suitable for street driving.
One of the interesting things in the second article is about an Avanti going 142 mph with four people in the car including two women race car drivers known as the "Flying Housewives." It is not clear who was driving, but Studebaker was reaching out to women drivers even if most of them did not want to own (or could not afford to own) an Avanti.
If anyone knows more about an R-2 Avanti racing with Studebaker at Bonneville, I would like to know about it.
Style wise, I think the fairest statement for the Avanti is "love it or hate it". I like *most* of the car very much---the fuselage and tail, and the cockpit. I don't like the front end at all, and I don't think it has aged well over time either. Perhaps part of that was due to the Avanti II, the "car that would not die", exposing the public to a decades-old design for far too long.
Had Avanti retired as a champion, like say the ball player who quits while on top, the car might be regarded more highly today---but with the Avanti II, it stayed around so long, and just got worse and worse.
Think about how you'd feel about your favorite 60s car if it was made and re-made and cluttered up well into the 1980s.
A car that held the record for the fastest unlimited American production car for more than 30 years earned the title of a high performance car, especially since it appeared two years before the first “pony car” known as the Mustang.
It is not like Studebaker took a standard passenger car, put a fastback and hidden headlights on it and called it a muscle car. The Avanti was more than a Charger, a Marlin or a Barracuda. Here is a page of articles about the Avanti at the time it was produced. http://www.theavanti.com/road_tests.html#
The titles and the types of magazines say what a great car it was. Elegance With Muscles - 1962 Canada Track & Traffic/ Forward Surge From South Bend - 1962 Car & Driver/ Sizzler From South Bend - 1962 World's Fastest Sports Cars/ A Sensational New Studebaker - 1962 Carlife/ Studebaker's Forward Thinking - 1963 Sports Car Graphic
'A high-performance sports car...that seats four.'
Fiberglass body, very minimal chrome embellishments, power available to make it the world's fastest production car, disk brakes, most-assuredly a higher percentage of four-speeds than in other luxo barges of the period, and bucket seats the magazines called 'best this side of the Atlantic', as opposed to the usual bench-seat-cut-in-two-with-20%-removed-in-the-middle buckets of other cars of the time.
I'm glad they never used the wide whites pictured on that one magazine cover in jljac's link! Clashes with the cleanliness of the rest of the car.
I heard a Studebaker engineer at a Studebaker Drivers' Club international meet say that Sherwood Egbert, President of the Corporation and 6'4", more than once konked his head on the Avanti seating buck and insisted that the windshield be made straighter, vertically, so that guys his size could get in and out easily.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIyX7lWj7ws&feature=related
http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/1963-1964-studebaker-avanti5.jpg
Having no one in my family who ever owned a Studebaker, I have just been impressed through the years with what Studebaker did, considering they were smaller than AMC whose cars I consider very boring at the same time. Studebaker made a fiberglass-bodied sports coupe, a luxury coupe, a full-line of compact/mid-size cars, supercharged engines, four-speeds, disk brakes, full instrumentation standard, inside hood release, sunroofs, sliding roof wagons, pickup trucks with first use of 5-speeds and sliding rear windows, big Diesel-powered trucks, all at a time when you couldn't get a two-door hardtop Rambler Ambassador or a V8 Rambler Classic even.
I agree with that completely. The Thunderbird and Riveria were much heavier cars and were rarely sold without power steering. That is why I did not like the Popular Mechanics road test with the Corvette, T-Bird, and Riveria where the Avanti was the only one without power steering.
The Avanti II was more of a luxury touring car because it did not have the body rake, loud mufflers or supercharger. Only the early ones had 4 speed transmissions as an option.
I reviewed some articles on the Bonneville speed records and found that no R-2 was present some 1962 magazine articles did identify it incorrectly in 1962 after the first speed runs that year.
At the second event in 1963, it was the gold Avanti R-3 number 9 that broke the production car speed record of 153 mph set the previous year by Mickey Thompson in a Pontiac Catalina. The Avanti went 170.75 mph.
Only the driver was on board at the time, probably Andy Granatelli. The Avanti was slower than the Catalina when the Avanti had three passengers on board. As stated in my previous post, the Avanti wilh four people on board was only clocked at 142 mph and may have been driven by a woman. Try to do that in a Corvette!
I still think Avantis are a good "buy" in the classic car market, if you purchase one already restored. They aren't yet valuable enough to justify a full restoration.
This plan seems somewhat similar to what Studebaker did. Studebaker announced the car at the 1962 New York Auto Show, gave one to the winner of the Indy 500 (better than the King of Sweden), flew a couple of them around the country to show them off and hired John Cameron Swazy to advertise them, built one with a special black paint job for Ian Flemming, sold another to World Series pitcher Sandy Koufax, (aka the National League's Most Valuable Player in 1963) then took them to set official speed records at Bonneville with Andy Granatelli.
Movies??? Mr. Ed was not a TV show but millions saw the Avanti in their homes every Sunday. Mr. Ed will be a movie soon.
Drag racing??? The car was obviously not configured to be drag racer with its low profile and light rear end. I like Studebaker's plan better. Too bad they could not produce 20,000 of them as planned in 1962. “Egbert planned to sell 20,000 Avantis in 1962 but could build only 1200.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studebaker_Avanti
Marketing those 1,200 Avanti's differently would not have made the difference. Instead, Studebaker ended with a glorious and interesting history as a the builder of a great American car instead of ending up as a Mitsubishi wearing a Jeep-Eagle badge.
Whenever I get to drive an Avanti, it reminds me of a "red meat" kind of car---it's a man's car. It's not sophisticated or quiet and personally, you couldn't pay me to go 130 mph in one (it's outside its chassis and braking limits for such speeds), but it's fun in that 60s kind of way. There's nothing quite like the feeling of a 60s domestic with lots of HP.
I'm sure most women would have hated it and most Studebaker buyers would be afraid of it.
Automotive history shows any number of companies that produced their most interesting products as their "swan song" ---Pierce Arrow, Packard (the original Packard, not the Packardbaker), Duesenberg, Austin-Healey----they all did their best work the day before their funerals.
As is the case with most '60's cars. If you can afford it, pick the car you like best and don't think about it as a stock or bond. I had my rusty '63 Lark Daytona Skytop R1 restored when I was in my early 30's by a Studebaker shop which had done Hershey Junior and Senior Firsts, but I reigned them in a bit and had them do a body-on with excellent Deltron paint and authenticity in and out as the key. I came close to breaking even when I sold it this year. Much of that is the wide availability of NOS for Larks, especially then. Not much NOS available for Avantis.
The Avanti is the kind of car you want to buy DONE. For what you pay for a nice one, you are basically paying for the restoration and getting the car for free.
There is a big advantage to restoring an Avanti because you don't have to deal with body rust and it is not too difficult to take the body off the frame for any work that is needed there.
I wonder if anyone has successfully installed AC in a supercharged car?
I believe that air conditioning was not offered on supercharged Avantis because it might cause cooling problems. The Bonneville site I posted earlier mentions how STP was added to the oil to reduce the oil temperature to safe levels because the heat was making the oil too thin.
I did not pay much attention to the Avanti because he stripped all the paint off it to prepare it for a paint job and was not driving it at the time. He was more into mechanics of the car than the appearance in any event.
I find that hard to believe: STP would cool the oil? It might keep its viscosity higher than oil without the thickener that STP is.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
All STP does is gum up everything. You might as well put pancake syrup in your engine.
OVERHEATING -- yes, the Avanti, and really, *any* supercharged car has to deal with heat buildup...even my little MINI has an intercooler, synthetic oil, and special spark plugs to deal with this.
Any weakness an engine has, be it the head gasket or oil leaks, is going to be immediately exploited by a supercharger or turbo.
Once again, here is the article I was speaking of, see page 2.
http://www.studebaker-info.org/Magandart/hmn1209/hmn1209.html
The article says adding STP cooled the oil temperature from 300 to 200 degrees. Andy Granatelli reported the same event in his book, They Call Me Mr. 500.
In 1963 synthetic oils were not widely available and using an intercooler that was not stock would have disqualified the car from setting production stock car records.
Who here claims to be the greater expert on automobile engines than Andy Granatelli ?
The engine is cooled by the coolant. Unless he added more cooling and or collant capacity, then instead of just the oil heating up to say 210 degrees, the oil + the STP will heat up to 210 degrees. If he's running 300 degree oil temperature, he's going to kiss the engine goodbye sooner than later. But of course in racing longevity is not an issue, winning is.
Apparently the FTC agrees with me about STP and fined him heavily for false claims.
http://www.ftc.gov/opa/1995/12/stp.shtm
How many books did you sell? How many times did you have a car in the Indy 500? What auto companies hired you for your expertise? Please tell us more.
But hey, hats off to Andy for his racing accomplishments as well as his talents as a snake-oil salesman.
I've written 4 books, but only two on cars (out of print, alas). But I still do work for Road & Track now and then.
Winning the Indy 500 doesn't make you a chemist, in the same way that a nuclear physicist, or a brain surgeon, is not the person you ask about marine biology.
http://motors.shop.ebay.com/Cars-Trucks-/6001/i.html?_nkw=1963+Riviera&_catref=1- &_dmpt=Motors_Car_Truck_Parts_Accessories&_trksid=p3286.c0.m1538&_rdc=1
There are lots of nice cars that aren't worth restoring---but people often do anyway :P
What you want to do is shop for someone else's restoration.
There seems to be only two possibile solutions to this discussion, (1) Andy Granatelli was lying about the effect of STP, or (2) he does not know what he was talking about and knows less about engines than than you do. Which choice is correct?
Exactly what I did when I bought my '66 Daytona Sports Sedan a few months back. I like '64 Studebakers best of all, but I have to admit that with me not being a wrench, getting work done on a 283, not needing a hub puller for the rear brakes, and factory five-inch wide wheels that a 205 will fit right on, were all appealing things to me. I kind-of like the '66's trim reshuffling and rear louvers for flow-through ventilation too. And fewer than 1,000 Daytonas built was appealing to me too.
I can help there.
The STP is mostly in the sump with the rest of the oil. Only the light film on the cylinder wall is active in helping to "cool" the action going on in the engine.
It does not make sense that a slight, if any, change in the friction on the wall is going to cool the motor. I'd like to hear any explanation of how it could have an effect.
And remember most of the STP is sitting in the sump with the oil--that does no cooling.
The only certainty of things getting transferred doesn't involve heat: The certainty is that the customer's money gets transferred to Andy Granatelli's wallet.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
I thought that engines had many moving parts, such as the crank shaft bearings, the camshaft bearings, the rocker arms and the oil pump. Reducing friction should reduce heat. Transmissions generate heat and they have no cylinder walls. Explain that.
I'd like to hear any explanation of how it could have an effect.
I don't have an explanation because I am not an expert on engines or motor oil who claims to know more about engines than Andy Granatelli.
I only mentioned that supercharged Avantis probably did not have air conditioners because the supercharger generated additional engine heat and that Andy Granatelli used STP in his Avantis under extreme conditions to reduce the heat. He was was so impressed with it that he bought the company. There were plenty of witnesses to the events he described, he made millions of dollars selling the stuff and I know mechanics who swear by it. That is good enough for me.
I did have bad experiences with AMSOIL (which I sold for a short time) and Arco graphite, and Mobil 1 (which is more like transmission fluid.) I never had problems with STP and I only had one rebuild on my Studebaker V-8 which I have owned and operated since 1979. Last (and only) rebuild was around 1990, and it still burns clean and has good oil pressure.
It doesn't take an AG to know that a 100 degree drop in oil temperature ,to a level below that of the coolant, doesn't happen. Coolant, by virtue of the radiator, is typically cooler than the engine oil.
Moreover, if STP had that ability, don't you think they'd claim it? No mention anywhere on the STP site.
I have heard of folks who have retrofitted A/C to a supercharged car. My understanding through the years was always that it was a space issue under the hood, initially.
The first few years I drove my R1 Lark (86K miles when I bought it and engine never opened up), I would add STP per the instructions on the can. It did improve oil pressure. In later years I would just use Rotella 15W40 until the zinc was gone; now I use Valvoline Racing oil at that weight which has ZDDP in it (positive for old engines). The cost doesn't worry me at only one oil change a year.
http://www.studebaker-info.org/Magandart/hmn1209/hmn1209.html
The pic of the Gran Turismo Hawk from the rear shows how they retooled the decklid to make it smooth and metal-insert-less that year, for ultimately only 1,767 units in four months of production.
At ten to sixteen dollars a quart, this can't be the regular STP we're all talking about here.
If the friction is great enough to noticeably increase the heat generated beyond the ability of the coolant to move the heat from the engine to the atmosphere through the radiator then there would be rapid deterioration of the engine parts you mentioned.
Wouldn't putting in STP to increase the viscosity at engine temperatures be equivalent to putting in 20W-50 oil today?
>I did have bad experiences with AMSOIL
I find that really interesting that you have negative results with AMSOIL. I thought it was one product with avid defenders period. Sort of like Zaino. I have never used either.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
The Studebaker Hawk in rear view (p. 39) shows strings hanging from the rear fender edges. Is that salt collecting that way from the speed runs?
Also interesting that someone was using Chevies: a white 1964 and black 1964 shown in the pictures.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
I like the big Studebaker truck there too...those are very rare.
It's too bad Studebaker didn't survive.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
Oh, it is, they repeatedly refer to "STP Oil Treatment". They must have taken the cost per bottle and put it into a per-quart basis.
First FTC action in '76, then '78, then '95 ... quite a track record (sorry) of dishonest advertising.