(first posted 9/22/2014) It is well documented that the last really new Studebaker was the 1953 model. The Starliner and Starlight Coupes got all of the glory, but the bread and butter of the line were the regular sedans and coupes. These “standard” Studebakers were nowhere near as good looking as their sportier siblings, but had just as long of a life – sort of. It is received wisdom that Studebaker kept building that 1953 model all the way to the end. But did it? Let’s take a walk through the many changes that Studebaker would make to these cars in the attempt to keep things fresh.
Many casual car fans do not fully appreciate how different the Loewy coupes were from the rest of the Stude line in 1953. These were, really, two completely different models that shared almost no major body panels. And with the lackluster reception that these models received from the buying public, Studebaker would be forced to rely on both of them until the end of its days. And like with a leftover Thanksgiving turkey (that the ’53 models sort of turned out to be), the cooks in Studebaker’s styling department kept finding new ways to serve up the leftovers for the next decade. Sort of like Turkey Helper?
I have previously compared the AMC Hornet (and the cars that were made out of it) as AMC’s ’53 Studebaker. However, the more I have thought about the analogy, I am not being fair to the Stude. While the first Hornet and the last Eagle were easily identifiable as sharing the same body, this comparison is not quite so clear between the ’53 and the ’64-’66 models put out by Studebaker.
Studebaker was fortunate in one respect, which was that its cars were still body-on-frame construction. This meant that changes were much less expensive to make than on cars of unit construction. This problem would plague Nash and Hudson as the 1950s progressed, making it virtually impossible to disguise the basic bones of their aging unit-construction bodies. However, the fact that the Studebaker was less expensive to change didn’t much matter when they didn’t have the money to make changes anyway.
This would be a good time to point out one interesting feature about the 1953-55 Studebaker two-door sedan – a feature that I had never noticed until recently when I was looking at one on the Bay of E. Notice how the body panels behind the doors and ahead of the rear fenders appear to be vestigial doors, welded into place.
As visible as it is in brochure artwork, it is even more so on an actual car, especially so in a light color. If ever there were a smoking gun to prove how behind schedule the company was in getting the new ’53 models out the door, here it is. Had the folks in South Bend possessed a bit more imagination, we could be discussing the inspiration of those suicide-door cab-and-a-half pickups of the 1990s. But instead, we just shake our heads at the cutting of a very visible corner.
The first big money to be spent on the car was on the be-all and end-all of 1950s styling: the wraparound windshield. This was seen as such a huge priority that the company couldn’t wait until the new 1956 models to bring it out. Many of you may never have noticed that there were both early and late 1955 Stude sedans. The early cars (and most, if not all, of the lower-priced Champion models) came with the 1953-54 -style windshield. Then midway through the year, the new wraparound windshield appeared. There were even two versions of the cover page of the brochure. The 1950s version of Photoshop?
Not as radical as the wraparounds from GM and Ford in 1955, the Studebaker version was fairly conservative. Good thing, as it turns out, because that design would be on these cars for quite awhile. The 1955 windshield would display another trait that would dog these cars to nearly the end: Studebaker could never make enough changes to a new style to make it really look new. The late ’55 windshield was easily missed on the 1955 car that so closely resembled the prior models. Then, when the heavily revised 1956 model came along, the stylish new wraparound windshield would be ignored as a holdover element from last year’s car.
The 56-58 models had quite a lot of design money spent on them, but it was almost all in the sheetmetal and trim below the beltline. This restyle was notable for the loss of the scallop in the rear door that confirmed the kinship between the 1953 sedans and their sportier Starliner cousins. However, though the scallop in the rear door disappeared, the rest of the character line from the front fender would remain, simply disappearing in the back door. This line would dictate the placement of side trim for quite a few years yet. The greenhouses of these cars (the most expensive part to change) were mostly unchanged from the late ’55 cars, except that the two-door sedans finally received proper rear quarter panels that did not resemble a welded-shut door.
There was one significant change to the 1958 model that I had missed completely. Everyone notices the awkwardly incorporated quad headlights. But what was missing was that ubiquitous rectangular fresh air vent in the front fender. Although this feature would remain on the Hawks until the final 1964 models, the sedan line eliminated it beginning in 1958. Am I alone in wondering if that money might have been better spent on a more elegant solution to the quad headlight problem?
There was one mysterious exception to the unchanged greenhouse during these years – the attractive single year hardtop roof of 1958. This hardtop will go down as one of the great mysteries to Stude fans everywhere: With the first investment made in the roofline of this body since 1953, why did it disappear after a single year? If nothing else, why did this roof never get adapted to the Lark?. Could it have been that there was a stench of death from the rest of the ungainly 1958 model? But I digress, so back to the sedans that are the topic of this conversation.
The 1955 greenhouse would come over to the new 1959-60 Lark pretty much unchanged. On the one hand, it did not make for an unattractive compact, and may have been the best looking coupes and sedans put on this body up to that time. On the other hand, the Lark’s unique greenhouse styling made the new car immediately recognizable as a rehash of an old one that had never received much love in its earlier iterations. Actually, the Lark’s windshield appears to carry a different part number from that of the 1955-58 car. Whatever the change was, it seems invisible to the naked eye.
Also, this is where we correct those who would claim that the Lark was nothing more than a 1958 model with the overhang on the front and rear ends sawed off. The Lark also received a new 108.5 inch wheelbase, shortened considerably from the ’58 Champion’s 116.5 inches. At least part of this eight inch shortening shows up in rear doors that for the first time received a dogleg cutout for the rear wheel openings. Could the 1958 Studebaker have been the last mainstream passenger sedan with perfectly rectangular lower rear doors?
The relative success of the 1959 Lark must have freed up some major restyling funds because the first change to the roof of the car would appear on the 1961 model. For the first time since 1953, Studebaker did away with the reverse-slant C pillar that had been a signature styling feature on these cars. Also, you probably never noticed that the windshield was changed again, with a more upright angle and less of the wrap-around effect.
Actually, the old style roofline was retained on the stretched Lark Cruiser which joined the lineup in 1961. The Cruiser was really a retail version of the Econ-O-Miler taxi model which shared a 113 inch wheelbase with the four door wagon instead of the 108.5 inch wheelbase used on the rest of the Lark line. Do the rear doors on the ’61 Cruiser look vaguely familiar? Those longer rear doors likely mandated that the “classic style” roof be maintained.
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I find it interesting that the contour of a 1953 front fender will line up with the contour of a 1966 front door. With every change Studebaker made in that time, they never changed both the front door skin and the front fender at the same time. So that contour couldn’t change over those 14 years! Look closely and you’ll see.
GREAT enjoyable website – thanks!!!!
So – I went to Country Classics in Staunton Illinois and met up with you guys and among the hundreds of cars available, there appeared a 1964 Studebaker, remember?
What surprised and disappointed me was how the changed fenders, doors, roof, windows, and trim didn’t come together, in person – as a whole. In person, the car looked like it was assembled with different parts, which it had. The profile photos and ads didn’t capture the lack of unity revealing itself via the convex of the sides, front and back of the car. The car looked misassembled in person.
The Studebaker’s competition was created as one piece, so that even an inexpensive Falcon or Valiant appeared higher quality than this.
I am sad to report that I too have noticed this. I loved the 64 Stude as a kid – especially the Daytona hardtop owned by my then-best friend’s grandmother. Today – I admire what they tried to do, and I still like the car enough to own one if the opportunity arose. But there are elements of the design that jump out once you have noticed them – like the way the Daytona’s side trim bends at the cowl, moving downhill in each direction from that point. Once seen it cannot be un-seen.
Even with the clever end-cap, the carryover ’62 rear quarter panels really don’t work with the rest of the design. They were so close. It’s like if Chrysler had carried over the roof line and rear quarter panels of the ’75 B-body coupes to the sedans and wagons.
> Could the 1958 Studebaker have been the last mainstream passenger sedan with perfectly rectangular lower rear doors?
I’d go with 1965 Lincoln Continental
> The relative success of the 1959 Lark must have freed up some major restyling funds because the first change to the roof of the car would appear on the 1961 model.
That’s the second change; the first was in 1958 when the roof became much flatter than the 53-57 design. Did they lower the seats to compensate, or did headroom take a big hit? (The wagon didn’t get the flat roof until 1959).
Thanks for all the effort that went into this article, which I missed when previously published. I now can better understand better just how Studebaker managed to keep going (just barely) for the last 10-15 years of its existence.
My father was a confirmed Studebaker man for many years, owning a 1953 Starliner, a 1956 Champion sedan and finally a 1963 Lark two-door sedan bought used in the late 1960s as a short-distance commuter car. I only knew the last of these and was acutely embarrassed by its dated, Spartan appearance that clashed with the longer, lower, wider ethos then popularized by GM and Ford. I always thought the 1962 and 1963 Lark were virtually identical, but after viewing the pictures above, I was compelled to go back through family photo albums to confirm the vintage of our Lark. Sure enough, ours had the revised greenhouse, marking it as a 1963 model.
“> Could the 1958 Studebaker have been the last mainstream passenger sedan with perfectly rectangular lower rear doors?
I’d go with 1965 Lincoln Continental”
When I saw that sentence in the article I immediately thought of the Citroen CX. Made until 1989 (Station Wagon estate until 1991).
Regarding the whole to-do about the exposed B pillars, the 1971-73 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham and Fleetwood Seventy-Five also had exposed B-pillars. For the 1974 model year, the front door skins were extended to hide the lower B-pillars.
Didn’t the ’66 Studebaker have one last-gasp innovative feature, flow-through ventilation with the exit vents integrated with the tail lights? (Not common on 1960s U.S. cars.)
Missed this the first time around, but what a wonderful, comprehensive article JPC!
Does the 1958 Studebaker wrap-around compound rear window has the same shape as the 1957-59 Chrysler cars since Virgil Exner designed the 1957-59 Forward Look, does it seems familiar even the taillights has Dodge influence?
Studebaker chassis also changed very little in significant ways…making it easy to source and swap parts. It’s one of the easiest marques to restore and drive…I know, I’ve been doing it since 1963.