Postwar Studebakers

uplanderguy · April 2020

I met Egbert's secretary a couple times in South Bend at Studebaker events at the museum, although at that time she lived in California. She told me she kept in touch with Mrs. Egbert still ('90's). Mrs. Egbert also lived in greater L.A. at that time. The secretary's name was Martha Fleener, and she was married to Lon Fleener who was part of the group of men involved in managing Mercedes during and after Studebaker's involvement with them. She married him after she was Egbert's secretary. She was a charming older lady, very much the 'gatekeeper' sort I would've imagined. Seemed loyal still.

I read years later in her wanting to join the Avanti club, she said "I don't own one but had one as a Company car. I hope that is sufficient".

ab348 · April 2020

uplanderguy said:
You are correct! I had missed that.

My Dad wouldn't have been caught dead in a Studebaker, but I found myself looking at them even when I was a kid, thinking they were so different.

The current (June 2020) issue of Collectible Automobile magazine has a feature on the 1957-59 Silver Hawk. Just picked up my copy today, haven’t had a chance to read it yet.

uplanderguy · April 2020

Thanks for the reminder. I had heard that Richard Quinn, one of the two legendary-in-Stude-circles history guys, was working on a Silver Hawk article. I don't love Silver Hawks, but I will buy that issue. I can remember at least a couple Silver Hawks around town when I was a kid. My dealer friend told me they would at times paint the roofs and fins of Silver Hawks white, to spruce them up and make a little extra local profit.

uplanderguy · May 2020

Richard Quinn shareable photo from FB; color photo of new '61's loaded onto trains at South Bend. I'll take that Hawk.

In my mind, Studebaker was a small car company, but pictures like these, along with seeing South Bend in the eighties when most of the factory buildings were still there, remind me that a small car company is still a large company indeed.

https://scontent-ort2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/95323677_10223697487534012_816825307079114752_o.jpg?_nc_cat=111&_nc_sid=07e735&_nc_ohc=wwDSyV7qwygAX8xIeyd&_nc_ht=scontent-ort2-1.xx&oh=7071be4705a8fbc02460aee48e59b164&oe=5ED62C14&dl=1

ab348 · May 2020

Studebaker painted their wheels bright silver in this era?

uplanderguy · May 2020

Only for '61. Weird, I know. '62-66, all wheels were painted off-white.

uplanderguy · May 2020

To a lot of Studebaker folks, a factory-supercharged '64 is a 'holy grail'. I dug out the club magazine where people had gone through all the '64 V8 build sheets in South Bend, recording which had Avanti engines. Eight '64 Cruisers had the supercharged engine, and this sorry example is on eBay now:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/1964-Studebaker-Avanti/153940881287?hash=item23d7976f87:g:7EIAAOSwu0FexeEz&fbclid=IwAR1tTG5ZCMf45aF4N9jKXm09vjf5hOxrdqjjikXN_xBJ1DyHf40VJel1XNc

Too bad it was allowed to deteriorate so badly, and what a dumb way to get the hood to open. There's a way to do it from under the car if the inside release wasn't working, sheesh.

As a car guy my whole life, it always amazes me that the condition of a car over the years depends so much on who owns the car, on top of location, of course.

Absolutely amazingly to me, my hometown dealer, Carl E. Filer Co., Greenville, PA, sold two of the eight supercharged '64 Cruisers; one to an employee of the shop. Both cars were black. The color of this eBay car is (was) "Golden Sand".

fintail · May 2020

Hopefully it is rescued as a labor of love. Neat car.

uplanderguy · May 2020

A friend and expert on these cars pointed out a few areas in the pics that would indicate that this might actually be a somewhat lower-mileage car.

I thought that myself from the look of the driver's seat.

At first I thought that was a hat with a Studebaker logo lying on the front seat. It's the section of hood that was cut out!

If there's as much rust as I can see, I'm sure there's more I'm not seeing, unfortunately.

Funny to look at this compact four-door sedan and see a 160 mph speedometer!

fintail · May 2020

The kind of car where you'll spend double or triple its value to restore it - but someone with money and love should do it. A period sport sedan, almost like the equivalent to an M or AMG car of its day.

uplanderguy · May 2020

Posted by the Studebaker National Museum today. If I had oh, ten or so, chances to go back in time and come back safely, one would be to go back and pick up a fire sale '64 Hawk at South Bend, like this one--even one without an outside mirror!

1964 Gran Turismo Hawk

kyfdx · May 2020

Hey! Get off my car!

fintail · May 2020

That'd probably do a couple grand in damage to many modern cars.

uplanderguy · May 2020

Surprised and honored this morning to see the pagemaster of the "All Original Cars" group on Facebook choose my car to head up the page. There are 35K members of the group worldwide. I had posted it there last week.

uplanderguy · May 2020

Did some research on ancestry.com last evening. The original purchasers, Vernon and Fay Hutchinson of Grand Junction, CO, passed in 1983 and 1974, respectively. I can find their one son, now 85, living in Missouri. I am sort-of compelled to print out some hard pics of the car and paperwork and send him a letter. I'm curious when the family sold the car. I bought it in 2017, and that owner bought it on eBay three years earlier from FL where supposedly it had been for thirty years.

uplanderguy · May 2020

Here's a newspaper ad from the selling dealer. The three new 1966 Studebakers they talk about would have included mine, which was purchased on April 16, 1966.

EDIT: Sorry, not able to get the PDF from newspapers.com to print here, grrrr.

fintail · May 2020

Yeah pdf won't work here. If you can do a screen capture (control-print screen) and save it into an image editor, crop out the bit you want, you can upload that.

uplanderguy · May 2020

Thanks, too much work, LOL.

fintail · May 2020

Sometimes I think parts of the internet are difficult on purpose

I wish I had kept the data I found on the fintail's original owner. I had tracked him down online (he was in his 60s or 70s when he bought the car, passed away in the 1980s IIRC), but I didn't think forward enough to record the data, and now I can't find it again.

uplanderguy · May 2020

I think I am going to write who I think is, their son. At 85, I have pause to do that, but I think I'll do it anyway. I'd just enjoy information on the car, the sale, even interests/hobbies of the original owners, just to fill out the ownership of the car. We'll see. If I'm out, it's only a few stamps I guess.

fintail · May 2020

Yep, it can't hurt. At worst you'll get nothing, and might luck out with a reply. For all you know, he has period photos of the car he'd copy for you or send to you.

uplanderguy · May 2020

Letter sent with S.A.S.E. I was going to go to CVS or Target and have hard copy photos made to include, but I didn't know when/how I'd get that done, and not even sure their machines are in operation, being touch-screen stuff. We'll see if I hear something back.

fintail · May 2020

Good luck, could be a fun surprise. An original photo of the car would be a treasure, IIRC you had some of your Skytop.

uplanderguy · May 2020

I did get a couple original photos of my Skytop, but those were from the original owners themselves. We'll see. I think I'd be pleasantly surprised if I got a letter from someone who owned one of my Dad's cars, but I realize not everybody is a car guy.

fintail · May 2020

I'd be thrilled to get a letter from someone who owned one of the cars once in my family too, but yeah, most wouldn't care - and I in the era I grew up in, most of the modern cars were almost certainly used up and thrown away anyway. But I'd be happy if I knew the 60 Ford wagon is still out there somewhere (I suspect it is, my theory is exported as that was just picking up steam when the car was sold). I also swear I saw his Fairlane maybe 5 years after he sold it, and it looked fine - it was nice enough to maybe not be ruined.

imidazol97 · May 2020

Do insurance agencies keep paperwork from old insurance policies such as when your dad had the car insured?
Is that same agency office still there? I've wondered what happened to my 67 Mustang. I have no idea of how to search for old insurance since the office location is long gone.

fintail · May 2020

I think the agency in the small town where my parents lived still exists, and I think my mom still uses it. Not sure if they'd have records from 25 years ago, I know they've relocated during that time. I wonder what data they'd have, other than the car being removed from my parents' policy.

It's too bad there's not a universal database to see if a car still exists - not giving any personal data, maybe just using a serial number/VIN to see if a car hasn't been destroyed or otherwise removed.

uplanderguy · May 2020

I think with a very high-volume car like a '67 Mustang, the chance of finding any info about it would be slim.

I posted it here at the time, but maybe seven or eight years ago, a woman contacted me from an article she'd seen that Hemmings had used, that I had written, wanting help in finding her original Avanti she owned from '63 to '66. The production was small enough that with the help of a couple Avanti gurus I knew, and she remembered it was non-supercharged, gold, and an automatic, and remembered the dealer, and with the paperwork at the Stude Museum, we were able to pinpoint it to three cars. The archivist looked at each of those three retail sale cards and found one with her name on it. I put notices on every old car, even general, websites I could think of, and a year went by and the car did surface....but it had been repainted and was having a SBC installed. She and her hubby were not interested. After travelling to look at similar eBay cars and being disappointed, they ended up buying a gold '64 that was at a dealer only 90 mins. from their house. They were able to trace that car to the daughter of the selling dealer, who drove it in high school. The dealer name was Snuffy Smith Motors in Dallas, LOL.

ab348 · May 2020

A cool $20,000 bought this really nice ‘55 Stude pickup.

https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1955-studebaker-e-5-pickup/

uplanderguy · May 2020

Boy, that is a sweetheart! Thank you for posting; I had not seen it.

isellhondas · May 2020

Fintail and Uplander! Good to see both of you are still here!
I am back!

fintail · May 2020

Welcome back.

You need to get a vintage car, maybe a Studebaker.

uplanderguy · June 2020

Yeah, what fin said! Welcome back.

My 81-year-old friend, a real Studebaker guy through-and-through, this weekend bought a 1964 Super Hawk with R1 (non-supercharged) engine. 40K miles on the odo and I believe it. I'd never seen the car before. The Moonlight Silver paint isn't necessarily 'wow!', but what a nice car. 160 speedometer. Has the complete 'Super' high-performance package, which includes Twin Traction, disc brakes, HD springs and shocks, and 4-ply tires (LOL). I'm happy for him. It was sold new in Navarre, small town of under 2,000 people south of Massillon, OH,
best-known around here and NW PA, for Nickles Bakery products. Note no outside mirror but he's going to add one.

ab348 · June 2020

Great IP design, though I find it odd that the tech and clock are larger than the speedo.

uplanderguy · June 2020

I never noticed that before, but you're right....apparently to squeeze all the other gauges in. When you didn't get a tach on these cars, there was no empty bezel; the right 1/3 of the wraparound panel was just the black, plain panel. Odd, LOL.

ab348 · June 2020

When I looked at the pic, my first thought was that if they made the speedo the size of the other 2 large instruments, and made those instruments the size of the existing speedo, they could have relocated the small minor instruments into the side panels. I wonder what the thinking was at the time.

uplanderguy · June 2020

The '62-64 Studes, except trucks and Avantis, were designed by Brooks Stevens, an industrial designer as opposed to stylist. I'd bet it has something to do with 'balance'. An odd idea of his, on the '63 Larks, was if you got one with a clock or tach (both optional), the tach/clock was in the center of the three round gauges, and the speedo was on the right. If you got neither a clock or tach, a bezel with "Studebaker Corporation" written around the perimeter, was put in the center. I'm thinking he thought "well, there'd be instruments on the two outside positions and a blank in the center". The '64 Lark-types had a very similar panel to the '63 (not a three-plane panel like the Hawk) but the speedo moved to the proper center position no matter if you bought a clock or tach.

imidazol97 · June 2020

Beautiful Hawk.

uplanderguy · June 2020

BTW, looked back at the issue of our national club magazine where someone compiled all the R-engined information from build sheets in South Bend, and only 60 Hawks were built in that shortened '64 model year, with the complete "Super" R1 High Performance Package.

Only 1,767 '64 Hawks were built in total, and all were built between August and December 20, 1963.

fintail · June 2020

Did it originally not have a mirror?

uplanderguy · June 2020

It was not built with an outside mirror, which was still optional equipment in the '64 model year. He has a repro Stude mirror already that he plans to install.

fintail · June 2020

Keeps that MSRP low?

I know passenger mirrors are sometimes rare options on period cars, but cars of that era usually have such good visbility that one isn't needed. I could get one for the fintail for maybe $250 or so, but I've never felt I needed it.

uplanderguy · June 2020

The '64 Gran Turismo Hawk started at $2,958, pretty low for a car like that I think. But I want to say outside mirrors were optional even on a Chevy at that time. I'm thinking backup lights, seat belts, and outside mirrors weren't standard on most cars until about '66. Going from memory though, and we know about that.

fintail · June 2020

That reminds me of the old classified car ads, well into the 60s where I see a heater being mentioned, like there were cars without heaters. Of course, those weren't standard for awhile, too.

I recall my dad's 60 Ford didn't have backup lights.

ab348 · June 2020

fintail said:
Keeps that MSRP low?

I know passenger mirrors are sometimes rare options on period cars, but cars of that era usually have such good visbility that one isn't needed. I could get one for the fintail for maybe $250 or so, but I've never felt I needed it.

I bought a NOS one for the Cutlass at a swap meet 20 years ago. I was a bit nervous about drilling the holes in the door for it as the Olds mirrors of the time used an unusual attachment mechanism, sort of a mushroom-head fastener on the bottom of the mirror that only had a small hole on the visible surface outside for a allen wrench to tighten it, so it needed a rather large keyhole-shaped hole in the top of the door. But it came with a drilling template and installed with no issue.

As a rear-view mirror is is rather useless as it is flat glass and gives a very limited field of view. We forget how much an improvement convex mirrors were in that application. But it does provide a nice symmetrical balance in looking at the car, so there's that.

uplanderguy · June 2020

Funny thing about my friend's Hawk--when I had my white '63 restored, I was deciding which of Studebaker's two outside mirror styles to use. I liked the Stratovue (first used on the Avanti, but available on any Stude). A friend talked me out of it and I used the Stratoline. I always regretted that and bought a repro Stratovue but the mounting holes were different than what was on my car. So I never used it. I had sold it to my friend maybe seven or eight years ago, still in the box. I think I sold it for $30 or $35, less than the $90 or so I think I paid for it some years earlier, but wasn't going to use it, and he is a friend. He said he came across it and will use it.

uplanderguy · June 2020

Side note about the friend's Super Hawk--it was delivered at a dealer in Navarre, OH, a small town maybe 35 or 40 miles from here. I googled it and the window sticker below, for a '64 Avanti came up. What an odd color combination I've never seen--and not sure I want to--Black exterior, Turquoise interior! Black was optional on the Avanti, supposedly for the extra body prep needed for black to look good on the fiberglass body.

This Avanti has no radio nor power steering, also odd.

https://studebaker-info.org/Dealers/amanssalesnavrraoh1962a.jpg

uplanderguy · June 2020

I googled that Avanti's serial no. and it survives, although appears to not have had the greatest care. My eyes!!!

https://studebaker-info.org/AVDB1/R5000/64R5049/64R5049x17022018/64R5049x17022018.html

fintail · June 2020

That's what would stop me from getting one for the fintail, drilling. That, and I don't really need it. The car has a relatively low (compared to a modern car) beltline, and thin pillars. It also has a small rear view mirror, but that's fine, as the car has such good outward visibility, that any blind spot is minimal. I think a lot of late 50s and early 60s cars were that way.

I've seen single mirror cars called "Van Goghs". Come to think of it, dual mirrors were optional on some cars well into the 90s, I especially recall early 90s Hondas without them.

ab348 said:

I bought a NOS one for the Cutlass at a swap meet 20 years ago. I was a bit nervous about drilling the holes in the door for it as the Olds mirrors of the time used an unusual attachment mechanism, sort of a mushroom-head fastener on the bottom of the mirror that only had a small hole on the visible surface outside for a allen wrench to tighten it, so it needed a rather large keyhole-shaped hole in the top of the door. But it came with a drilling template and installed with no issue.

As a rear-view mirror is is rather useless as it is flat glass and gives a very limited field of view. We forget how much an improvement convex mirrors were in that application. But it does provide a nice symmetrical balance in looking at the car, so there's that.

fintail · June 2020

That's a pretty cheap paint fee. That Studebaker window sticker font is very distinctive.

uplanderguy said:
Side note about the friend's Super Hawk--it was delivered at a dealer in Navarre, OH, a small town maybe 35 or 40 miles from here. I googled it and the window sticker below, for a '64 Avanti came up. What an odd color combination I've never seen--and not sure I want to--Black exterior, Turquoise interior! Black was optional on the Avanti, supposedly for the extra body prep needed for black to look good on the fiberglass body.

This Avanti has no radio nor power steering, also odd.

https://studebaker-info.org/Dealers/amanssalesnavrraoh1962a.jpg

Postwar Studebakers

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