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Comments
It is important to note that the Avanti was first shown to the public at the April 1962 New York auto show - - - two years before the first Mustang appeared and before the first 1963 Corvette Sting Ray was shown to the public . The Avanti is always compared to cars that came later. That is what makes it a classic.
Why? Marlin = intermidiate, Barracuda = compact. :confuse:
FWIW, I always thought the first-gen Barracuda was pretty clunky too. But at least it had an excuse. Once the Mopar brass found out about the Mustang, they cobbled the Barracuda together as quickly as possible, and managed to beat the Mustang to the showroom floor by a few weeks.
I thought the '67-69 Barracuda was beautiful though...that fastback style was just about perfect, and the hardtop coupe was a real looker, too.
That style became obsolete in 1947, when Studebaker came out with its cars that made punsters say, "Which way is it going?" But within ten years, most cars had a long trunk. That style continued until 1962 when the Studebaker Avanti with its long hood and short trunk left no doubt which way it was going.
I campared the Rambler Marlin and Plymouth Barracuda for the same reason Wikipedia does. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rambler_Marlin
The Marlin was also "the first AMC car to take off after the muscle car pack" of the 1960s, and it followed the design signatures of the Ford Galaxie "Sports Roof", the Plymouth Barracuda, the Mustang 2+2, and the 1965 fastback models from General Motors, including the Chevrolet
Impala "Sport Coupe" versions.[11] When equipped with the V8 engines, the Marlin provided "snappy driving to go with its streamlined look."[11]
Well, whoever wrote the Wikipedia article was off base. Impala, Galaxie, sure, but not Mustang or Barracuda. Not much cross-shopping going on there!
The Avanti was built on a Lark convertible frame. The Mustang was based on the Ford Falcon chassis, the Barracuda was a model of the Valiant. the Marlin was a fastback Rambler Ambassador. I see a lot of cross-shopping going on.
I'd imagine a Marlin cost a lot more than a Mustang though, so price class might have limited cross shopping more than size class.
Phantom Corsair.....built with Heinz money by Bohman and Schwartz on a supercharged Cord chassis. Amazing car for its time.
2009 BMW 335i, 2003 Corvette cnv. (RIP 2001 Jaguar XK8 cnv and 1985 MB 380SE [the best of the lot])
Wow, looks kind of like a cross between a '49 Mercury, a catfish, and a bumper car.
It's interesting that while they managed to do away with running boards, which were still used in 1938, and blended the fenders right into the doors--also a very modern touch----they couldn't quite bring themselves to melt the headlights (??) all the way into the fenders. I think that was a big design error---retrogressive rather than progressive. It looks like a 1920s Pierce Arrow because of that. Still has a split windshield, but a radical rake on it.
In some ways, it suggests the highly innovative 1955 Citroen, the latter most certainly a milestone car.
I remember the first time I saw one of those back in the Fifties, I thought someone had bobbed the tail on a Studebaker, or it's collision repair had gone terribly wrong. A few years later I rode in one in Europe, and it was pretty impressive.
Must have been the French historians.
Must have been the French historians.
The French loved that Citroen and I recall reading that when they pronounced "DS" it sounded like "déesse."
On the subject of old Citroens, were these things good cars? Style-wise, it's still stuck in the 30's, even though they made them up through 1955 or whatever. But I think it's a good looking car, and very modern in having FWD, unit-body construction. And the low-slung, wide passenger cabin was definitely a sign of things to come. I always thought these were neat cars, but it recently popped back into my mind. I had Tivo'ed "To Catch a Thief", which is where that scene is from, about a year and a half ago, but then forgot about it. Well, lo and behold, it's still on the Tivo, so I started watching it on Sunday night.
http://bringatrailer.com/2011/02/07/bat-exclusive-1967-alfa-romeo-giulia-super/
http://bringatrailer.com/2011/02/07/bat-exclusive-1974-mercedes-benz-w115-240d/
I purposely included the Alfa because it's located in your neck of the woods.
Theirs was an automatic, so even slower than the one for sale.
Gawd, my mother hated that car!
It truly is a remarkable car in that respect--very modern, and very much foreshadowing the future of the passenger cars we see today.
I would say it's the first truly modern postwar production car built in the world and deserves a high place in automotive history.
I think the "Traction" style cars, actually built from 1934-57 in some form or another, were very good cars. Good engineering and style all at once.
Mercedes 240D -- no offense to a marque I truly love, but this is a wretched little car and I wouldn't own one for anything.....well, if you *gave* one to me I might play with it for a while. Rough, slow, noisy and expensive to fix. And the price they are asking is ambitious, to say the least. I would think 1/2 that is fair enough.
Shifty Sez: "If that Mercedes diesel isn't a turbo, don't go there".
The Alfa looks amazing, probably has a lot sunk into it.
There was a Citroen in the neighborhood where I lived and it looked like a low rider, probably because the hydralic suspension leaked. Packard was doing something similar with their suspension system in 1955. I don't believe that idea went anywhere, but I could be wrong about that.
The Packard system was a "load leveler" idea, only in the rear, and worked off an electric torsion-bar system. It wasn't all-wheel and it wasn't hydraulic.
The Packard system was clever, but troublesome, as were their new OHV V-8s. Packard also had a lock-up torque converter. It was quite innovative for 1955 but not very well worked-out.
Again, under-capitalization doomed the little guys in the 50s.
The few people I knew who owned them in the US loved the way they rode, but weren't pleased with the service and repair demands. And they weren't particularly roomy as I recall, but quite narrow.
The DS was named the world's third most influential car in the Car of the Century awards, behind the Model T and the Mini, as I recall. High praise indeed.
Modern FWD subcompact cars today trace their heritage to the MINI.
I have my doubts that anyone used a wind tunnel to design a car in the early to mid 1950s. I do know that the 1953 Loewy coupes and hardtop bodies were very popular dragster bodies during the 1950s because they were slippery and fast.
I believe that the most influential cars of the 20th century were the Ford Model T and the VW beetle. The Beetle had a huge influence on the international market Volkswagen did so well that it got bigger than Ford and is getting close to the size of General Motors now. The Big Three now are Toyota, GM and VW.
this year, they had a 1926 Kissel, and a 1933 Squire. Try getting parts for those babys at the local NAPA.
2020 Acura RDX tech SH-AWD, 2023 Maverick hybrid Lariat luxury package.
The Citroen DS could take 4 people up to 90 mph with a 116 cubic inch 4 cylinder engine and 75 HP. It had a drag coefficient of 36, power disk brakes, rack and pinion steering, hydropneumatic suspension and a 4-speed transmission.
The 53 Studebaker is rather prehistoric by comparison (as were most '53 Amercan cars) , using a 3.8L V8 with 120 HP to attain 93 mph, with a CD index of 40. (A CD of .40 is worse than a Volvo 740 sedan, but better than a Lamborghini Countach!!) Drum brakes, bias ply tires, recirc ball steering, 3 speed transmission.
I have no idea if Citroen used wind tunnels, but they were certainly in use at that time in aircraft manufacturing.
Technologically, some of the Europeans were 20 years ahead of us in the 1950s. Benz had fuel injection, Alfa Romeo was using alloy dohc engines and 5 speed transmissions, Citroen had innovative suspension and brakes and FWD.
We had waaaay better gadgets and comfort features however.
It's not that they were smarter than us. It was more about a) all their old factories were bombed out, so they started from scratch and b) their fuel was very expensive and their motors were taxed according to size.
Necessity is the mother of invention, etc.
It's fun to look at other CD ratings:
1938 VW --- slippery? Hardly -- CD of .48
2003 Hummer---a brick, right? Exactly so, with a CD of .57
1986 Mazda RX-7 w/ aero package -- CD of .29
And finally a real surprise
1935 Tatra T77, with a CD of only .21 !!
Do you really think a '53 Studebaker would even be that good, when it comes to aerodynamics?
One of the first cars I can remember them really touting wind tunnel testing in the ads was the 1978 Malibu, which had a drag coefficient somewhere in the high .4X range, IIRC. As a point of comparison, I remember reading that a '77-79 Cougar XR-7 was something like .58!
When the GM midsized coupes were re-skinned for 1981, with lower noses, higher rear-ends, and flush-mounted opera windows, the cd dropped to something like .43. The '82 Firebird broke the .40 barrier, and was considered a big deal at the time.
A '53 Studebaker might look pretty sleek, but I doubt if they would've been able to come at a drag coefficient of .40 just by styling something that looked sleek.
Supposedly the 1969 Dodge Daytona had a drag coefficient of .28! (allpar.com) I wonder if they put that nose through any kind of wind tunnel testing?
Wind tunnels have been around for so long that they are older than powered aircraft! The Wright brothers built a wooden box wind tunnel for scaled-down wing testing and concluded their first tests in 1901.
The Burney "streamline" car from 1930 even had belly pans underneath to smooth the airflow. I wonder if that may have come about from testing aircraft or cars in wind tunnels back then? Burney designed the R-100 dirigible too.
Blue and White Beauty
Hard to compare this to the '71 Polara found last week - this is restored, not original, but also a much nicer, more costly car.
That '71 Polara is now up to $7,000 - reserve still not met. Wonder what this one will bring.
2017 Cadillac ATS Performance Premium 3.6
I know, the CD for the Studebaker seems unusually low given that it's a car with a 50s American-style body, high stance, no bellypans and open grillework, but I figure I'd give it the benefit of the doubt and report it like Wikipedia stated it. I got the Citroen CD from a pretty reputable Citroen book.
I cannot find any source that says a Citroen DS would carry 4 passengers to to 90 mph.. I see a top speed of 87 m.p.h. here. http://www.carsession.com/car-specs/1955-citroen-ds-19.html
That makes the Citroen performance comparable to a 1955 Studebaker Champion hardtop tested by Special Interest Autos with a top speed of 85.59 mph actually tested in the Hemming's book. Additionally, the Studebaker could carry 5 or 6 passengers, had much more passenger room (and trunk space) and weighed approximately 450 pounds more than the Citroen.(2679 lbs Citroen vs 3,122 lbs. Studebaker).
The best summary I can find of why the Citroen did not sell well in the USA is here http://wikicars.org/en/Citro%C3%ABn_DS
While the DS was a hit in Europe, it seemed rather odd in the United States. Ostensibly a luxurious car, it did not have the basic features that buyers of that era expected to find on such a vehicle - fully automatic transmission, air conditioning, power windows and a reasonably powerful engine. The DS price was similar to the contemporary Cadillac luxury car.
In summary, if you wanted to pay a Cadillac price for a French car that looked and performed like a small, sawed-off Studebaker Champion, then the Citroen DS was just the car for you
I know nothing about CD, but I know the '53 Studebaker did not have a "high stance". There was nothing lower on the American market that had a back seat.
We were talking about world auto journalists voting the Citroen the 3rd most significant car of the century. This has nothing to do with the preference of U.S. buyers. It's about the car, where the rubber meets the road, not the sales figures in America. This car was way bigger than that. America is not the world in other words, not then, not now.
The Citroen DS made the world's eyes boggle and lit up Europe's press pages.
Ditto the E-Type Jaguar when it came out.
These were exceptional automobiles.
Some early DS even had translucent (tinted, not clear) roof panels, it was like a spaceship.
They're available at your local bank.