I spotted an (insert obscure car name here) classic car today!

uplanderguy

Thanks. After the '56, my next-favorite Ford.

I have a cheapie little Samsung laptop, no mouse, one 'glide' type button for everything. Frustrates the **** out of me.

andre1969

'61 for me would be a Cadillac. In fact, I've even said that if I ever have the financial means to get another antique car, I want it to be a '61 or '62 Cadillac. Second runner up would be a '61 Pontiac...always loved the looks of those.

uplanderguy

Thank you, just lovely. Not a Stude I would search out for myself, but I love low-mileage originals, almost no matter the make.

Has a tach but no clock, unusual. I've seen them with a clock where the tach is, but I've also seen them with a tach, and a clock to the left of the glovebox, which is how I would've bought one.

I think the instrument panels in these cars are plain, especially when they don't have both the tach and clock. But when this panel came out in '56 (unchanged through the '61 model year), magazines praised the engine-turned panel, no-nonsense layout and "sports car instrumentation".

The Hawk was rumored to be going away after the '61, but new president Sherwood Egbert liked it, and he said dealers told him they wanted it to stay as it generated some showroom traffic, so he commissioned Brooks Stevens to update it with the Lark for '62.

In fact, 1960 Hawks were not produced at all until February 1960, as prior to that they were cranking out as many '60 Larks as they could.

If you have a chance, go back a day or two and click on the link in my post with the Jet Green '64 GT Hawk at Mecum (I think it was). Beautiful.

One of the old moderators got tired of me posting Stude stuff here and set up the "Postwar Studebakers" page. He blamed it on complaints from other posters, LOL. He couldn't compliment a Studebaker if you paid him...then I found out his Dad had worked for Packard. I've met a fair amount of those guys who are still "fighting the Civil War" and mad that Studebaker survived (and even thrived for a bit), while Packard went away.

sda

kyfdx said:

^^^^^

The color combination on the Monte Carlo is stunning. I like the Impala, too. It looks like the same color as mom’s 72 Cutlass Supreme. Olds called the color Nordic blue and the Cutlass had the obligatory black vinyl roof.

fintail

1961: still a couple years left for the 300SL, and it's even the same color as the fintail:



61 was the first year for 111 coupes/convertibles like the one I posted for 71, hard to go wrong with one of these:



I suppose I also need to choose one of these:



I prefer a 60 Ford to a 61. The Starliner above is nice. This Country Sedan looks much like my dad's 60, not a fan of the skirts:



Who doesn't like a nice bubbletop Impala?



Chryslers were pleasingly overdone:



Not overdone:

benjaminh

uplanderguy said:

Thank you, just lovely. Not a Stude I would search out for myself, but I love low-mileage originals, almost no matter the make.

Has a tach but no clock, unusual. I've seen them with a clock where the tach is, but I've also seen them with a tach, and a clock to the left of the glovebox, which is how I would've.....

What would you guess the original list price of that black 61 Hawk would be with the options that it had? Roughly, I mean. Was it a $4000 car? 5k?

PS I did look at that 64 Hawk GT when you listed it. Beautiful car. I'd like to look at it again, but I'm having trouble finding it in the blizzard of our posts.

PPS found it....

https://www.mecum.com/lots/SC0514-183958/1964-studebaker-hawk-gt/

uplanderguy

'61 Hawks started at $2,600-something, that I remember. I bet most were in the low 3's, but merely guessing.

uplanderguy

I totally forgot '61 Lincolns, just truly timeless (and I realize that word is overused).

When my daughter got married last year, I was hoping I could find a suicide-door Lincoln from '61-65 to rent as a wedding car, but of course none could be found. We rented a '61 Bentley instead, which made my Harry Potter-loving daughter happy (just that it's British, you know). Hey, since it's a '61....

EDIT: Deleted the pic. If she knew I posted it online, there'd be hell to pay, LOL.

uplanderguy

fin, I think I showed you the pic of the 111 coupe parked in front of the Studebaker Administration Building in South Bend in Sept. '62. I gotta believe it was an exec's; maybe even Egbert's. I'd have to look for it again, sigh.

My high-school nurse drove a 190 the same color as your fintail and that 300. This was in the early '70's. Years later, my Stude-MB dealer friend said he knew her and her husband and that they had serviced the car, but he didn't remember if they sold it--which I think he would've remembered if he had.

benjaminh

You're right. I just looked it up with NADA and the base price of a 1961 Hawk was $2650, which seems like a bargain since it's only c. $650 more than a base Falcon. Give me a time machine and sign me up!

omarman

1961. Ask not what Cruella can do for you, but what can you do for Cruella




15 seconds of 1961 Econoline Station Bus racing at wide open throttle:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dx8jZYihU94
I really like these things.


Willys Jeep Wagon


Not just a DeSoto...it's an Adventurer

roadburner

1971:
Boss 351
GTX 440 Six Pack
GTO Judge 455 HO
2000 Touring
3.0 CSi
Jensen Interceptor
Pantera

1961:
Alfa 2000 Touring Spider
TR3
Impala SS 409
Porsche 356B 1600S Roadster

fintail

No doubt it was an executive car, those things were fairly dear, I'd guess ~8K at the time. For that you got manual windows and seats (not even optional) and the opportunity to pay for dealer-installed radio and AC.

I recently thought about that, did Stude make any real money in the MB partnership?

uplanderguy said:

fin, I think I showed you the pic of the 111 coupe parked in front of the Studebaker Administration Building in South Bend in Sept. '62. I gotta believe it was an exec's; maybe even Egbert's. I'd have to look for it again, sigh.

My high-school nurse drove a 190 the same color as your fintail and that 300. This was in the early '70's. Years later, my Stude-MB dealer friend said he knew her and her husband and that they had serviced the car, but he didn't remember if they sold it--which I think he would've remembered if he had.

imidazol97

uplanderguy said:

A South Bend-built '64 Lark Challenger for $1,629? Sign me up!

The ad is pricing a 2 door sedan. But the picture is a 2 door hardtop!

uplanderguy

Not only a hardtop in the pic, but two very noticeable trim levels up from the actual model advertised!

RE.: Did Studebaker make any money from the M-B agreement:

I've read in the past year, that in 1965, with South Bend shut down, even the engine plant by that time, an exec from Stude, maybe Byers Burlingame, the bean-counter president appointed after Egbert was let go the Monday after JFK's assassination, went to Germany to talk to 'Benz about cancelling their sales agreement with them but no one at M-B would see or speak with him.

That whole thing seems odd to me--one might think M-B would've been the one to want to cancel the sales agreement, as Studebaker was losing dealers on its own. But then, it did give M-B a ready-made dealer organization of sorts.

On the date of the announcement of South Bend's production shutdown, Dec. 9, 1963, Studebaker had just over 2,000 U.S. dealers. At the time of the announcement that no more cars would be built at Hamilton, ON, on March 4, 1966, I've read they were down to 450 U.S. dealers. With the elimination of trucks, Hawks, and Avantis, and with GM power, and being only built in Canada, only the most diehard Studebaker owners bought '65 and '66 cars. Word is that Studebaker wanted attrition of dealers as had they completely gone out of auto production when they had 2,000 dealers they would've been flooded with lawsuits. Apparently they felt that would've been more manageable with fewer dealers. They had several other divisions that were making money.

fintail

I imagine Stude got a certain take, and MB got a dealer network for a tiny investment - both sides win. But I guess as the decade went on, MB was able to gain enough market and capital to go out on their own. I guess after nearly 60 years, the numbers probably don't exist anymore.

uplanderguy

Back to the pics of that black '61 Hawk for a second--I just noticed the little 'hawks' embroidered (or whatever) into the cloth upholstery. I've always heard they were like that, but I think I've only ever seen all-vinyl interiors on them in person.

Benefit of a low-mileage original car.

benjaminh

If you buy a luxurious 1934 Oldsmobile a lot of good things will happen to you. Heck, a guy will even entertain your kids by playing with a monkey on the hood of your car. Plus the back seat is almost as comfortable as your couch at home, and the rear window has it's own pull-down sunshade. So looking at it, the backseat room is large partly because there's no trunk—and so all the room going back to the back of the car is part of the rear seat. Plus it looks like it even has a nearly flat floor. I think cars were tall enough in the early 30s that the drivetrain could mostly just be underneath the car.

uplanderguy

My Studes have had very small center humps compared to the Big Three cars I grew up on. Part of that I'm sure is that, other than Hawks, their cars tended to be taller than Big Three cars. I remember seeing a '77 Caprice next to a '77 Monte Carlo at our dealer's, and it hit me that GM had discovered "tall" again.

andre1969

My guess is the "step down" Hudsons were one of the first designs to move toward more low-slung cars. Prior to that, I don't think there really was much difference between a car and a pickup truck. In fact, back in the day it was common to just take an old car,chop the body off aft of the B-pillar, and build a homemade bed! I think it was especially common during the Dust Bowl, when old luxury cars had very little value, but were much beefier than cheaper common modern cars, so they lended themselves well to conversion.

My memory is actually starting to fade on the exact year now, but my grandparents' first "pickup truck" was a 1939-41 era Plymouth sedan that Granddad picked up cheap, and chopped up. One reason my memory's getting fuzzy on it, is I remember Grandmom saying Granddad had a Chrysler Royal when they first met in 1946. I want to say it was a 1940, but I might be running the years of the Royal and the Plymouth "pickup truck" together.

Mopar tends to get a lot of credit for really kicking off the low craze, with their '57 models. And they were considerably lower than the competition. However, they still had a lot of ground clearance, so it was the bodies that were lowered, moreso than the frames. I've been able to change the oil on my '57 DeSoto without having to jack it up. I can't think of too many other cars where I could do that, although with my 2000 Intrepid, if I parked it at just the right spot in my grandmother's driveway, with the front-end hanging over the edge, I could get to it, since the drain plug and filter were pretty close to the front of the car.

andre1969

I'm just curious, was it common to start a car in neutral back in the day, even if the transmission had a "park" position? I was watching an episode of "Father Knows Best" this morning, where Jim was teaching his wife Margaret how to drive. The car was a '57 Ford sedan, one of the cheaper models like a 300/Custom 300. The son "Bud" said "Make sure you have it in neutral". But, I just looked online, and it looks like the Ford automatic did have a "park" position.

And, it was an automatic car...Jim made a sexist comment like "Just because it only has two pedals, it's still more complicated than a washing machine!"

One other idiosyncrasy I notice in a lot of old movies and tv shows, is that it's common for the driver to enter/exit through the passenger side of the car. Not when they're in their own driveway so much, but out in public, especially when parked at a curb. I seem to remember the detective in "Psycho" even sliding out the passenger side of a 1959 Mercury in the parking lot of the Bates Motel.

uplanderguy

I'd not heard that, but I do remember Corvairs and early Tempests having no 'park' position so I guess it was essential then to use the parking brake.

omarman

This is what my mom's Corvair dash shift lever looked like:

I remember pulling the hand brake lever when I parked it in the driveway. But it's funny that I never thought anything weird about the R-N-D-L missing a P for park before.

Re: TV show dialogue "Make sure you have it in neutral."
The script writers may not have a clue about the cars being used on the set. After we saw the original Star Wars movie, my oldest brother pointed out a mistake in the dialogue. Han stated that his Millennium Falcon "made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs". My sci-fi fanatic brother told me that a parsec is measurement of distance, not time.

Re: Enter/Exit from the passenger side of car
That's another funny thing that I never noticed before in movies or TV until you mentioned it!

stickguy

The Ryder freight liner truck I rented had no park. You put it in neutral and pulled out the yellow knob to set the air brakes. Made a nice little whoosh and everything!

xwesx

omarman said:

After we saw the original Star Wars movie, my oldest brother pointed out a mistake in the dialogue. Han stated that his Millennium Falcon "made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs". My sci-fi fanatic brother told me that a parsec is measurement of distance, not time

Many people made a surprisingly big deal about that bit of dialogue. So much so that Disney included details of that reference in the recent spin-off movie, "Solo." As told in that show, the significance of the statement from Star Wars was, indeed, a matter of distance. And, yet, the smoothing over of that gaff remained a function of time....

texases

xwesx said:

omarman said:

After we saw the original Star Wars movie, my oldest brother pointed out a mistake in the dialogue. Han stated that his Millennium Falcon "made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs". My sci-fi fanatic brother told me that a parsec is measurement of distance, not time

Many people made a surprisingly big deal about that bit of dialogue. So much so that Disney included details of that reference in the recent spin-off movie, "Solo." As told in that show, the significance of the statement from Star Wars was, indeed, a matter of distance. And, yet, the smoothing over of that gaff remained a function of time....

Well that's not an interpretation I had ever considered. Clever! But I somehow doubt the original writer was trying to compliment Solo's navigational skill, as opposed to his reckless pursuit of speed.

ab348

I'm here shaking my head at the controversy (that I totally missed b/c I am not a Star Wars person) about the meaning of a totally made-up fictional term. Here's a theory: maybe a parsec is a measure of both distance and time in a way we cannot understand in our world's frame of reference.

texases

Parsecs are a real thing, equal to 3.086 x 10^16 meters, it's a commonly used unit of astronomical distance.

kyfdx

What he said.. ^^^^^

andre1969

"Parsec" was also a pretty cool sci-fi side scrolling shooting game, for the TI-99/4A computer back in the day

ab348

kyfdx said:

What he said.. ^^^^^

None of which disproves my theory though. If the writers of this stuff can't keep it straight (apparently along with the legion of producers and other behind the scenes types who would have read the script beforehand and not noticed) then maybe the audience needs to be a little less devoted to it too.

omarman

When any movie gets released it can be pretty far removed from the original writer's pen.

A friend who writes screenplays tells me that while studios purchase movie rights to a lot of projects, very few of them are produced into actual feature films. He's been writing and selling screenplays for more than 20 years and only one (1) has ever been developed and released as a movie so far. After selling that project to a studio the producer ordered several re-writes and my friend shared screen credit with 2 people he doesn't know. And he didn't like the movie!

Many years ago he told me about one of his science fiction projects that he sold and had high hopes to see it produced. It was a pretty simple concept that my friend thought most people could recognize and relate to. With all our devotion to space exploration, my friend created an alien race with similar ambitions. The aliens were coming to explore earth, bringing biological infections and flags to plant all over creation. Right here.

The aliens were genuinely puzzled and amused to find lower life forms who infested this world and made a kerfuffle to resist a fair and logical invasion of earth in the name of alien science and industry.

The movie making committee loved the premise and was eager to move the project forward. The re-write which they wanted (they all want re-writes) seemed reasonable since they wanted my friend to do it himself with only 1 stipulation. "There are too many aliens in this screenplay. Can you write out that part and focus more on the people?"

My friend had no words for the masters of movie making committee.

To me he said, "The story is from the alien point of view. Which is why I have aliens all [non permissible alien ranting] over the pages. It's the story of aliens!" To be fair he said a lot more but I was laughing so hard that I didn't hear the rest of it.


I don't know who created this amazing movie car but I was really surprised when told what it started out as...

imidazol97

I had to go look up parsec. I am not a Star Wars fan but hadn't paid
attention when I did hear that term. Astronomical Units, light years,
etc., were the usual terms I heard.

Mentioning Star Wars...
Star Wars actor Andrew Jack dead at 76 of China coronavirus.

https://metro.co.uk/2020/03/31/star-wars-actor-dialect-coach-andrew-jack-dies-aged-76-coronavirus-12484591/

uplanderguy

That's a '73-77 GM Colonnade sedan center section.

For it to spoof the 6000 STE model (a darling of the automotive press, BTW), this must have been made nearly a decade after that Colonnade was built, if not more.

fintail

RoboCop, 1987.

uplanderguy

I'm one of those guys, even when younger, that had to be dragged to stuff the whole universe is talking about, LOL. "Star Wars" (the first one) was one of those. I did go, just since everyone around me was talking about it.

texases

ab348 said:

kyfdx said:

What he said.. ^^^^^

None of which disproves my theory though. If the writers of this stuff can't keep it straight (apparently along with the legion of producers and other behind the scenes types who would have read the script beforehand and not noticed) then maybe the audience needs to be a little less devoted to it too.

HAHAHAHAHAHA...oh, you're serious? You ever seen a ComiCon? "less devoted"???? That's a good one!!

andre1969

The 6000 SUX was based on a '77 Cutlass sedan, IIRC. I thought the overall effect was actually pretty good. The '73-77 Colonade sedans did have a passenger cabin that seemed unusually modern, open, and airy for that time period. Contrast it to the Fords and Mopars, which had thick, blind C-pillars, and a beltline that kicked up towards the rear, making the rear door windows smaller (although in the case of the Torino/Montego, I think they did roll down all the way!) Ford did try to open it up a bit, with the '77 LTD-II/Cougar sedan, but they still seemed more closed off than the GM Colonades.

omarman

Apparently the 2043 OCP 6000 SUX from Robocop 1987 started out as a 1977 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme.

xwesx

texases said:

Well that's not an interpretation I had ever considered. Clever! But I somehow doubt the original writer was trying to compliment Solo's navigational skill, as opposed to his reckless pursuit of speed.

Same here, but I will give the story itself the benefit of the doubt.

andre1969

Happy Walter P. Chrysler day, everyone!! It's also my birthday...maybe I have some spiritual bond with the man, and that's why I've tended to have a preference for Mopars!

stickguy

Happy 51! Go treat yourself. Buy a car.

andre1969

Don't make me old before my time! This one's just the big 5-0. (Just to be dirty, I always had "1969" in my handle as the year I was conceived, not the year I was born )

uplanderguy

Happy birthday! I changed companies at age 50; wished I'd have done it sooner.

stickguy

Well, welcome to the half century club then. I was trying to keep a clean mind. It’s a family site!

andre1969

Hell, I had jo

uplanderguy said:

I'm one of those guys, even when younger, that had to be dragged to stuff the whole universe is talking about, LOL. "Star Wars" (the first one) was one of those. I did go, just since everyone around me was talking about it.

My Mom and Dad separated in 1977. One advantage of that, I guess, is that I got to see Star Wars in the theater three different times! Once with Mom, once with Dad, and once with my grandparents.

Same thing happened with "Smokey and the Bandit". I almost didn't want to see "Smokey and the Bandit", because I didn't understand what it was about. I vaguely recall there was some Love Bug movie out at the time, and I wanted to see that, but Dad insisted I'd love "Smokey and the Bandit". All I heard was "Smokey" and thought it was about Smokey the Bear! But, I'm glad Dad got his way that day! In those days, they let you walk in while the movie was playing. I remember we actually went in about 10 minutes towards the end, during the final police chase toward the Atlanta Fairground. And then, we just sat in the theater until the next showing.

ab348

Happy Birthday Andre!

fintail

Happy Birthday. Fun Smokey memory there, too. I am too young to have seen those when new (maybe could have remembered Smokey III, hard to believe that one made it to theaters), but am fortunate to have grown up when those and similar were constantly on TV. The same with Star Wars - I do vaguely recall Return of the Jedi being new, but I was never insane about it.

The gap between your age and your DeSoto is roughly the same as between mine and the fintail.

xwesx

I am not sure I recall the first time I was in a movie theater. Perhaps in middle school. Overall, I have not watched many movies in that venue... perhaps twenty. However, the first movie I recall watching at a drive-in was Terminator. What was that, 1984? I was a small pup back then, and the big T was really not honest fare for such a young mind.

fintail

Terminator is indeed from 1984.

My first movie in a theater was E.T. I saw it with my grandparents, and although the memory is hazy (I was 5 or 6), it is a fond one. Good car spotting movie if you like Ford Fairmonts, and it might have the most key role in any movie for an Audi C2 5000.