Studebaker.

[vacbear58]

Avanti

Being a Brit I restrained from commenting on this interesting thread.

From the side and rear the Avanti looks great although perhaps for its day, a bit to European looking - certainly it would have not looked out of place well into the 1970s. But my God, the front. What a disaster! I can see the styling cues back to the bullet nose but how could they put that front on a car so graceful and elegant from the side/rear. The interior looked pretty good too.

 

[whirlcool]

And each and every one of those Avanti's were hand built rather than mass produced. Just like the Buick Reatta was. For 1963, it was quite some car. The interiors looked more like an airplane cockpit than an auto.

 

[toploader55]

I agree on the back and front, but I still like the look of the entire Avanti.

They are right up there with the XKE and the E Type Jaguar.

I always melt when I see a 1970 E Type 12 cylinder.

 

[iheartmaytag]

Isn't the Avanti still being made by some private, low volume manufacturer?

I though I had seen this in the past.

 

BTW--HIJACK--I heard that there is someone in Texas that is going to produce the Delorean in limited runs within the year.  he bought the tooling and spare parts and is in that process.

 

I wanted to share what my Dad used to say.  Now remember he was a die-hard Chevy fan.  If it didn't have a bow tie on the front it was garbage.  Anyway he used to say that Studebaker and Chrysler were in  a contest to see who could make the ugliest cars, but Rambler won.

 

Just quoting a man that has been gone for 41 years now, but he said it so often it was stuck in my brain when I saw this thread appear.

 

 

[tinkr]

Gramps cars

He was a die hard Stude fan. 1st. stude I remember was a Lark red like the pics then a Grand Tursimo.

He drove back and forth across the country seasonly.
I got to drive the Tursimo across Texas on one trip. I was 12.
The only cars I can remember him owning.

He wintered in Az but spent summers in Brookfield New York on the family home stead.
That he and his brother Homer completely restored.

Drove the Grande untill he was 90 got in an accident. And did not repair it. He stopped driving across country at 90 and flew back and forth for many years.

Passed at 104. And I miss him dearly.

I bagged pics from the net. Colors are exactly the same.
Boy that Tursimo was a class act. And fast. I thought the Hawk looked like a box.

 

[tinkr]

Goatfarmer Maybe something of interest probably no rust.

This is offered on CL Phoenix

http://https//phoenix.craigslist.org/nph/cto/5630431351.html

 

[circlew]

I can't remember what the model of Studebaker we had was called, but it was larger than the Lark.

 

[goatfarmer]

Avanti hasn't been made in a lot of years. Newman/Altman first bought the rights and tooling for Avanti. I believe they were the only ones to successfully market the car. Mike Kelly bought the company later, and then he sold it. The last owner went bankrupt.

 

I think the Studebaker Corporation, in it's later years, also owned Franklin appliances. Just like they owned STP, Gravely, Onan, Clarke floor equipment, etc.

 

[d-jones]

I have to agree with vacbear58 on the Avanti front end styling. When one considers the amount of time and effort required to take a car from concept drawing to production, and all of the tweaking that takes place along the way, it's hard to fathom just how the front end went so disastrously wrong. The sides and rear view look great, but walk around to the front end and YIKES! The darn thing looks like it was severely beaten with an ugly stick. You'd think that somewhere along the way someone would have recognized that they had a problem and done something about it before all the money was spent on tooling. Nevertheless, I used to work with a guy that had three or four Avantis and he loved them. He'd often say they were the most beautiful cars ever made, so opinions vary.

 

My personal favorite is the 1953 Commander coupe. I have one waiting for restoration that was involved in an accident back in 1963. Thankfully the damage was confined to the front end, and since it's been kept in a garage ever since it's still in good condition overall.

 

[whirlcool]

There is a company in Houston that deals with Delorean's. They have what's left of the tooling and will either completely restore your DeLorean or build you a new one from scratch. For a price....

http://www.delorean.com/

 

[polkanut]

Here's some of what a person will see if you decide to visit the Studebaker National Museum in South Bend, IN.

http://www.southbendtribune.com/stu...cle_3b3a7e5e-1184-11e4-9e72-0017a43b2370.html

 

[supersuds]

Getting into this late, but another factor in Studebaker's decline was that their labor costs had gotten significantly higher than the companies in the Detroit area. Wages were 12 to 14% higher, there were more shop stewards, and there was an expensive incentive wage system. Even Walter Reuther, the head of the UAW, supported the company when it tried to eliminate the differences in 1954. Info from Studebaker: The Classic Postwar Years by Richard Langworth.

Bob Bourke, the real designer of the "Loewy coupes" (Bourke was on Loewy's staff) told Langworth that Studebaker Engineering "priced out a Commander Starliner using General Motors costing parameters. I found that Chevrolet could have built it to sell for about $2000 if they wanted to -- about $500 less than what we were selling it for."