We’ve relished beating up on the poor Champ a couple of times here before, But every time I see one, especially from certain angles, I just have to stop and try to take in this Frankenstein of pickups again. And try to fathom why Studebaker thought they could still make these in volumes high enough to justify.
They were obviously banking on the Studebaker faithful, which was something more akin to a church than the average brand loyalty.
In case you’re still a Champ virgin, let’s review its challenged short life. It arrived in 1960, to replace the venerable R series, whose cab was now utterly outdated. Studebaker couldn’t afford a new cab, so they grafted on the Lark’s front body half. An expedient solution, and not really all that bizarre, considering that back before the war, it was quite common for a pickup to do that, given the pickup’s origins as essentially a body style variant and not a unique vehicle. The Champ’s bed was the same one from the R-Series.
By 1961, smooth-side wide beds were rapidly taking over the pickup market, and Studebaker wanted one. Once again, they couldn’t afford to make their own, so they bought the tooling for Dodge’s now-obsolete bed. And that bed was several inches wider than the Lark body; the resulting mismatch can be clearly seen here.
It’s so egregious, that at least one Studebaker acolyte did what the factory failed to do: narrow that Dodge bed to make it fit better. How hard would that have been in the first place?
Better, if not exactly perfection.
For what it’s worth, Champ sales had a decent start (for Studebaker) in 1960, but sales fell of the cliff starting in 1961. I’m not assuming the mismatched bed was the only reason, but it sure couldn’t have helped.
This is the best way to appreciate the Champ.
And appreciate it I do. I actually wrote up one and titled it “I’m a Chump For This Champ”. A long bed Champ would serve me very well indeed. And we all know I’m a chump.
Here’s some more reading on the Champ:
CC 1963 Champ: I’m a Chump for this Champ
Those Champs are quite prized here not many made it and Studebakers were quite well reguarded from way back they were a big seller in days gone by and some older folk hadnt forgotten, the mismatched bed means little in a country where most light trucks were sold as cab n chassis and a flat deck or dropsider was locally or home built to suit well sides were not common here, or old sedans were cut down into flat decks and worked untill they fell to pieces such vehicles were not boight with asthetics as first priority it was more a case of how much work would it do before a major repair was required.
Last summer, Bring a Trailer auctioned a ’62 with a stakebed conversion, which you can see here:
https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1962-studebaker-champ-truck/
I really felt like the stakebed fixed all of the problems of the mismatched Dodge bed. I considered it well-bought at $13,250.
I was thinking a flatbed conversion would fix the truck’s looks, but that works really well too.
I wonder if Studebaker would sell you just the cab and chassis, or did you have to buy an entire truck?
The Champ was putting a new suit on essentially a ’49 2R chassis with whatever updates that had been done over a decade. It looked like the expedient effort it was, the ex-Dodge box only enforced that Studebaker was so broke that was all they could afford. Studebaker trucks had returned decent sales in rural areas where many of their dealers still were, had a loyal customer base they felt obligated to serve.
Re your question about cab & chassis. My recollection is that Stude would sell you just about any combination you wanted, hungry as they were to sell something, anything. Local rural mail carriers around here bought Larks because Stude (and Rambler) were the only ones who would prep cars with right-hand drive. And one time our guy traded in his RH Lark at the neighborhood AMC dealer for a RH Rambler and that thing sat there for years awaiting a buyer.
The old R5 stepside bed just looked so much better. It’s a real shame that they never had the chance to design a decent bed based on the Lark wagon rear quarters.
Agree regarding the R5 stepside box. If I would buy a Champ after I sell my GT Hawk, It would be a stepside with an auto trans—not an easy combo to come by.
Should have just kept making the R series. Truck buyers didn’t care about fashion, and even car buyers often prefer old good machines to new bad machines. The Rambler American was proving the point in 1960.
If only Mason had bought Studie instead of Hudson….
The weird thing is that there actually was a smooth-side bed designed for the Champ – if you lived in Argentina. From what I read online, Champs were shipped there without beds which were manufactured locally. There are other big differences from the US pickups – they were built on stiffened Lark frames (also used on the taxi, and convertibles??) rather than the Transtar truck frame, which is why they have standard (and better looking) Lark bumpers. The gas tank is also in a different place, the grille is unique, and the tailgate had “Studebaker” in script letters. Apparently these were also distributed to other South American countries. The bed still doesn’t look like a perfect fit but it’s much nicer than the U.S. bed.
Let’s try again with pic:
That looks fantastic. It would make a real nice light duty truck with the Lark chassis I suspect.
Yes, the poor Champ. Not much else to be said. I remember when my Stude-loving neighbor got one, probably about 1970 maybe? It was red and had a lot of surface rust, but was otherwise pretty solid. I was convinced that somebody had done a bed swap and I always wondered what the original one looked like. Oops.
The grille is the other thing that bothered me. These folks also had a 1960 Lark, so I knew what the front end was supposed to look like. It looked like a Lark grille, but with security bars to keep someone from breaking in through the radiator. And worse, the one down the street from me had the white painted grille, not the chrome one.
But for all that I liked the poor old truck. It was Bill’s daily driver for quite a few years.
Fashion disasters yes, but they are tough trucks. 5 speed manual anyone? Not going to get that from the big three. How about a sliding rear window? Available on Champs. Their small 6 cylinders flat and over were nothing to write home about but the V8 is a good solid motor. The 289 with 1/16 more stroke than bore makes decent torque. Forged crank. Forged rods. Forged rockers riding on a shaft. Gear driven cam. The engineers at Studebaker really tried to be innovative with little resources. Really not a bad driving truck.*
*Especially if you have the 63 style brakes. The earlier ones not so much.
The Stude V8 was undoubtedly a tough engine. But please note that before the mid 60’s, all engines to my knowledge used forged crankshafts (and of course always forged rods). High strength nodular cast iron for cranks was a new technology. The Chevy small block for instance only started using cast nodular iron cranks in 1963. And the reality is that cast nodular cranks are also very strong, and considered perfectly suitable for bracket and other racers up to 8,000 rpm. It’s a myth to think that they’re somehow intrinsically inferior except in the most extreme racing situations. An engine will more typically throw a rod before breaking a crank, and that would happen at engine speeds that the Studebaker V8 could only ever dream about.
True story. Back in the ’70s, when the 351 Cleveland was Fords go-to race engine in both Pro Stock and NASCAR, all the teams used the Ford cast crank. Bud Moore said he has never broke a crank. However, being slightly softer than forged steel, they would be completely worn out after a 500 mile race, and went straight to the scrap pile.
Ford’s patents on cast cranks from the 1930’s pretty much forced the rest of the industry to use forgings exclusively until the patents ran out. Making a single plane crank forging (four cylinder) is easy, but a challenge for a six, V-8, etc. Looking at a Corvair crank in my shop shows evidence that it was forged in a single plane and twisted into final shape.
A 1954 Ford engine brochure clearly states that the new “Y” block V-8 and the 223ci six had cast cranks.
Interesting. So Ford had a patent on cast cranks but didn’t use it until 1952, for the new 215 six? It’s always good to fill in these bits of history.
I guess I wasn’t clear. The ’54 brochure was only an easily verified example. The patent drawing clearly showed a crank for the Flathead V-8. Doing a mass produced V-8 cheaply required a lot of clever engineering. The earliest reference to a cast crankshaft in Ford literature was for ’35, the year of the patent I found.
Wow, the wheels in the top picture look very similar to the ones on the Dodge Conversion Van I wrote up a few days ago….
CC effect…
Studebaker wheels match up with the Ford bolt pattern so modern wheels are not usually a problem.
Only if you are referring to the five on five thunderbird pattern
Only if you mean five on five thunderbird/lincoln pattern. At least that was what was used with both R-series pickups in my past.