In the summer of 1962, American car magazines were abuzz with the introduction of the radically styled, fiberglass-bodied Studebaker Avanti, a new sporty coupe combining European design themes (courtesy of famed designer Raymond Loewy) with a beefed-up Studebaker chassis and some exciting mechanical features. Here’s the Car Life introduction from July 1962.
The name “Avanti” means “Forward” in Italian, but in some ways, this sporty new model also represented a couple of steps backwards for the beleaguered Studebaker-Packard Corporation.
1963 Studebaker Avanti R1 / Mecum Auctions
First, a significant faction of the S-P board of directors thought that staying in the auto industry at all was just throwing good money after bad, and that the company should get out of the car business to focus on other, less-risky fields. It was thanks mostly to dynamic new Studebaker-Packard president Sherwood Egbert (below) that the company was making one more last-ditch effort to revive Studebaker with an array of new and refreshed products, rather than just winding things down and preparing to liquidate the corporation’s automotive holdings.
Studebaker-Packard president Sherwood Egbert poses with the Avanti, 1962 / Studebaker National Museum Archives
Second, the Avanti was a reunion between Studebaker and the world-famous industrial designer Raymond Loewy, whose former Studebaker contract S-P had opted not to renew back in 1955. Between 1936 and 1955, Loewy’s automotive designers had been responsible for some of Studebaker’s s most memorable designs, but in the wake of the automaker’s troubled 1954 merger with Packard, new S-P president James Nance had blamed the Loewy group’s European-influenced styling themes for slumping Studebaker sales, and chafed at the cost of the Loewy contract. In early 1961, however, Loewy got a call from incoming S-P president Sherwood Egbert, who wanted him to develop a brand-new sporty coupe — quickly, quietly, and secretly.
Although the text by Car Life editor John Lawlor suggests that Loewy drew the Avanti himself, Loewy’s role in his firm’s various automotive designs was really as design director and impresario. The actual styling work was done by the automotive stylists on his staff, which at various times included Virgil Exner, Bob Koto, Bob Bourke, Vince Gardner and Bob Andrews, among others. In a 1983 oral history interview with David Crippen of the Benson Ford Research Center at The Henry Ford Museum, Bourke said Loewy was a great graphic designer and editor, but added, “He couldn’t draw automobiles — not at all. He was just ridiculous as far as cars were concerned, and he knew it.”
Even so, Loewy was internationally famous, and his firm’s designs were inevitably attributed to him personally. This rubbed some of his staff the wrong way, especially Exner, who eventually jumped ship and went to Chrysler, but Bourke and Andrews felt it was just the nature of the business. “That was understood when you went with him,” Andrews told David Crippen in a 1985 oral history interview. “He was much better known and had an established accreditation.”
Sherwood Egbert (left) with designer Raymond Loewy (right), 1962 / Studebaker National Museum Archives
(The Gran Turismo Hawk mentioned in the second paragraph was not by Loewy, although it was based on an earlier Loewy design, the 1953 Starlight coupe, revamped on the cheap by freelance designer Brooks Stevens.)
By the time this article was published, it seemed like Detroit was churning out “just another bucket-seated luxury car” every other month. This trend had been kicked off by the Chevrolet Corvair Monza back in the summer 1960, and by 1962, just about every U.S. automaker had gotten into the act (a separate article in this same issue of Car Life reviewed the Buick entry, the new Buick Wildcat). Since most of the Detroit “bucket brigade” had no real sporting qualities other than individual front seats and perhaps a center console with floor-mounted shifter, car magazine editors were becoming rather cynical about the whole idiom — which is why Lawlor takes such pains to emphasize that the Avanti is much more than just that.
Under its curvaceous fiberglass shell, the Avanti rode a Studebaker Lark chassis and used the existing Studebaker 289 cu. in. (4,737 cc) V-8, although both were modified for better performance. The Avanti was developed very, very quickly — Egbert and Loewy had their first meeting about the project in March 1961, and the full-size clay model was presented for production approval in late April! — so there was neither time nor money for all-new hardware.
Lawlor notes that the flared fenders and inward-curving midsection “has been called a ‘Coke bottle effect.'” What he doesn’t mention is that Loewy’s firm had actually been involved in redesigning the familiar Coca-Cola bottle in 1955!
The photos in the sidebar at the top of the page show the Lancia-based “Loraymo” design and a similar coupe based on the BMW 507, which bear a strong resemblance to the Avanti. It’s not at all uncommon for designers to “recycle” concepts like this, especially when working on such a tight deadline.
I’m not sure who actually designed Loewy’s European coupe proposals, which are pictured on the following page. They were probably penned by someone on his staff, although I don’t know by whom. The actual Avanti design was by Bob Andrews, John Ebstein, and Tom Kellogg, who did the primary design work in a rented house in Palm Springs in March 1961. Loewy may well have dictated most or all of the overall themes, which included a grille-less nose, curved side glass, an offset “gunsight” hood bulge, and a complete lack of straight lines, but he probably didn’t play much direct role in the drawings and clay modeling work.
1963 Avanti R1 engine / Mecum Auctions
The main text on this page describes the Avanti engines, which were offered in normally aspirated form or with a Paxton supercharger. These engines were later called R1 and R2 respectively, although those designations aren’t mentioned in the text.
Lawlor’s assertion that “The Hawk V-8 has always had considerable potential” was generous of him: The 1951-vintage Studebaker V-8 was never a particularly hot engine, and it didn’t have much remaining room for growth. As for its remaining power potential, well … You know the stage of drinking a milkshake or smoothie where there’s still a bit left in the glass, but getting at it means making a few rather rude noises with your straw?
1963 Avanti R2 supercharged engine / Chris Lang via RM Sotheby’s
The text says “no specific output is being announced” for the Avanti engines. That was true at first, but Studebaker eventually discovered that not publishing any rated power outputs was a big obstacle to the planned speed record runs at the Bonneville Salt Flats — the sanctioning body, USAC, wanted the factory horsepower ratings for classification purposes. So, the R1, which had 10.0 to 1 compression, a bigger Carter AFB four-barrel carburetor, and a longer-duration camshaft, was eventually rated at 240 hp (gross), while the supercharged R2 engine, which had 9.0 to 1 compression and a Paxton supercharger, claimed 290 hp.
Sherwood Egbert (in sunglasses) with Andy Granatelli at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, October 1962 / Studebaker National Museum Archives
The text only alludes to the convoluted relationship between Paxton, Studebaker, and Sherwood Egbert. Paxton Products, which made the supercharger, was originally a division of the McCulloch Corporation. (“Paxton” was company founder Robert McCulloch’s middle name.) Egbert had previously been a McCulloch executive — he joined the company as an assistant production manager in 1946 and eventually became executive vice president. The supercharger line had become an expensive headache, with many warranty claims, so in 1958, McCulloch had spun off Paxton Products and sold it to race builder Andy Granatelli. Granatelli made some changes to improve the supercharger’s reliability and did okay business with it once it was no longer such a warranty nightmare. In early 1962, Egbert arranged for Studebaker-Packard to buy Paxton Products, and enlisted the Granatelli brothers to help Studebaker extract more power out of the aging V-8 engine.
(You can read Andy Granatelli’s colorful account of this period in his 1970 memoir They Call Me Mister 500, which is available through the Internet Archive. There’s also lots of information about the early McCulloch superchargers on the VS57 McCulloch Supercharger web page.)
A three-speed manual transmission was standard on the Avanti with the normally aspirated engine, but you could also order the four-speed Warner T-10, which nearly all Detroit automakers used in this era, or a three-speed automatic. The text implies that the four-speed was standard with the supercharged engine, which wasn’t quite true: The R2 could only be ordered with the four-speed or automatic, but they still cost extra.
Lawlor gushes a bit too much over the controls of the optional “Power Shift” automatic, which was just the old Borg-Warner three-speed auto, reworked a bit to allow more manual control. The big inconvenience of the Power Shift transmission, which the text politely overlooks, was that none of its three ranges would let you use all three speeds unless you floored the throttle or were prepared to shift by hand between “1,” “2,” and “D.” This was still an old transmission, and very far from the state of the art by 1962 despite the new controls.
I have never driven an Avanti, but I have ridden in some, and the interior is honestly the best part. Its “aircraft-inspired” controls out-Thunderbird the Thunderbird, and there’s full instrumentation, down to a manifold vacuum gauge. The presentation is a little juke-boxy, I guess, but it is very appealing. The buckets have no headrests, but there is a padded roll bar built into the roof. A few years later, the corporate lawyers would probably have gotten very nervous about actually describing this item as a roll bar, lest it become liability-bait, and I don’t know if there was really any functional testing of it, but it was a nice thought. You could also order seat belts, although they weren’t standard.
The main text describes the suspension changes made to the Lark chassis, which were mostly parts-bin stuff: police car front coils and station wagon rear springs (presumably with heavy-duty shocks), plus front and rear anti-roll bars and rear radius rods. Spring rates were up over 40 percent in front, about 25 percent in back, to 110 lb/inch at the wheel in front and 136 lb/inch in the back; the 1963 brochure indicated that a stiffer heavy-duty suspension was also available. The standard manual steering ratio was typically slow-slow-slow, with five turns lock to lock, but you could get a faster ratio giving 3.5 turns lock to lock, with or without power assist. A Twin Traction limited-slip differential was optional.
1963 Studebaker Avanti R1 / Mecum Auctions
As every Avanti fan surely knows, the Avanti body shell was fiberglass rather than steel. Studebaker bought the shells from Molded Fiber Glass Body Co. in Ohio, which also made the fiberglass bodies for the early Corvette, although assembly took place at the Studebaker plant in South Bend, Indiana.
You would think fiberglass would be much lighter than steel, and it is, but it’s also less rigid, which is why the Avanti used the stiffer X-member frame from the Lark convertible. With the added weight of the heavier frame, Studebaker admitted the fiberglass body provided a net savings of only 71 lb (about 32 kg). The more important point was that fiberglass molds were much cheaper than tooling for steel body panels, and could be made much more quickly, both of which were important for the Avanti project.
I’m sure by this point in the text, every Studebaker fan reading this is squirming eagerly, waiting for mention of the brakes: Yes, the Avanti had front discs, the first caliper discs on a U.S. car since the early Crosley Hotshot of 1949–1950. Although the text describes them as Dunlop discs, they were actually made by Bendix under license from Dunlop. For the time, they were quite large (11.5 inches) and came standard with power assist, since caliper discs aren’t self-energizing like drums. Unlike Jaguar, the Avanti had finned drums in back, but these were still among the best brakes available on any U.S.-built car or truck in 1963. (The Corvette wouldn’t get disc brakes for another two years.)
You can see the discs in the upper right photo on the page above, while the middle photo in the second tier shows the frame’s hefty X-member.
One neat Avanti feature I hadn’t known about from prior encounters with the car is the little trap door in the rear package shelf, letting you stash small items in the trunk without opening the decklid — less useful than a fold-down rear seat, but still a convenient way to stash a purse or other small valuables out of sight. Trunk space of 15 cu. ft. (around 425 liters) isn’t bad for a coupe, and the liftover weight is lower than on a lot of small sedans of this time.
With the old-fashioned frame, the Avanti does sacrifice some headroom for its low height (53.9 inches unladen, about 137 cm). If you’re my height or shorter (5’9″, or 175 cm, if you prefer), it’s adequate, although someone over 6 feet tall will not be happy in the back seat — rear headroom is only 33.7 inches (85.6 cm).
The text mentions but doesn’t show the heater and light controls in the overhead console, so I found another vintage Studebaker press photo that also appeared in some Avanti brochures. These overhead controls were not really all that practical, but they DO help you pretend that you’re preparing to make the jump to hyperspace, which is I think of vital importance in a car like this. “Aircraft-inspired” controls like these were arguably just a silly gimmick, but Bob Andrews said later that the early Avanti was very popular with airline pilots!
There are unfortunately no driving impressions — the Car Life editors obviously hadn’t had a chance to drive the Avanti yet, resulting in their being scooped by Motor Trend, whose July 1962 introduction includes instrumented performance figures for an R2 Avanti with automatic transmission. (We’ll take a look at some driving impressions of the early Avanti in a future post.)
Studebaker hadn’t finalized base prices for the Avanti before Car Life went to press, but Lawlor’s estimate that it would fall between $4,000 and $5,000 was just about about right: List price for the 1963 Avanti was eventually set at $4,445 FOB South Bend. Not only was this more than a Thunderbird hardtop, it was enough to buy you a new Corvette convertible with a four-speed and a 300 horsepower engine, which didn’t exactly make the Avanti a contender for sporty car bargain of the year, despite its admirable features.
1963 Studebaker Avanti R1 / Mecum Auctions
Lawlor remarks:
The Avanti is bound to be controversial. Unfortunately, all too many people are apt to judge it on the basis of its dramatic styling. As we have tried to show, the bold stroke of Raymond Loewy’s drafting pencil is only one aspect of the car.
That was true, but it was ultimately the Avanti’s styling — and its low-investment fiberglass body — that really endured, outlasting the downfall of Studebaker and surviving well into the 21st century in diverse hands. If the first Avanti was a Lark in a gilded cage — as Road & Track put it around this same time — the last iteration was essentially an odd-looking fiberglass-bodied Mustang convertible, with no mechanical commonality at all with the original 1963 car.
Related Reading (and Listening!)
Curbside Classic: 1963 Studebaker Avanti – Flawed Brilliance (by Paul N)
Curbside Classic: 1963 Studebaker Avanti – Remembering a Mentor (by J P Cavanaugh)
The Unlikely Studebaker: The Birth (and Rebirth) of the Avanti (at Ate Up With Motor)
While transcripts of David Crippen’s 1980s interviews with former Loewy associates Bob Bourke and Bob Andrews have been available online for years, The Henry Ford and Detroit Area Library Network (DALNET) have now also made the original audio recordings available in MP3 format via the DALNET website. You can find them here:
Robert E. Bourke interview transcript and audio recordings, October 23, 1983
Robert F. Andrews interview transcript and audio recordings, August 2, 1985
(Although you can theoretically listen to the recordings on the DALNET site, I recommend that you first download the audio files to your local device and listen to them that way.)
Good point about how we really don’t know who drew up the Lancia coupe for Loewy, but Loewy did coach Tom Kellogg in that direction and Tom credits Loewy for the design. The Avanti is probably the only “Loewy Designed” car that he actually did have a hand in.
There wasn’t supposed to be a cover over the rear trunk area (like Mustang fastback) but pushback resulted in that hatch. I think the Avanti is the first American car with the long hood and short deck proportions that Mustang used.
AMT kit from 1964 is challenging to build.
The Avanti is probably the only “Loewy Designed” car that he actually did have a hand in.
I quite agree, except for the Loraymo and maybe the previous personal car he had made. It was well noted that Loewy had some pretty clear ideas and directions he wanted his team in Palm Springs to pursue to create the Avanti. It just looks like something he had a substantial hand in, at least in directing its creation.
That is my take as well.
The trap door is odd. A one-way business coupe for people who want to stash things fast but don’t want to access things easily.
Indeed, beyond odd. There’s no 33 inch-high-sized rear passengers who want to store anything beyond, say, a padded little elephant, and the front occupants seeking to hide an actual valuable would just end up arse-high in public view reaching over to that inconscipuous slot-of-subtlety, which such would surely have rather rather obviated the only imaginable purpose of the thing.
I always thought of that package-shelf access to the trunk as a feature that cost virtually nothing to add, but which is a kind of easter egg that makes people think “oh, what a great idea” whether they use it or not. I think it was probably most useful for kids in the back seat who might want to stow a jacket or a toy before the family parks and goes into a restaurant or something. It was certainly not the kind of thing that would tip a purchase decision.
Yes, exactly this. That sort of sums up the entire Avanti project, really: It was hastily and cheaply developed, but they really did want to find (affordable) ways to make it feel like something special.
I wonder if someone on Studebaker’s interior design team got a gander at the Beetle’s behind the rear seat well and thought, “Hey, let’s do something like that!”. Remember, these are the same guys who thought the Wagonaire’s sliding rear roof was a good idea, too.
And then it’s just the idea of it in actual practice. Whatever got tossed back there, if it was something like a small package, it would be flopping around in the trunk. And getting access would seem to be limited to rear seat passengers with long arms. Even then, regardless of what it was, it’d have to be retrieved later by opening the trunk.
The trap-door is just goofy and seems way more like a marketing gimmick that no one else has ever done (for good reason). Besides the impractical nature, seems like carving up the metal underneath could compromise integrity of unibody construction (the Avanti was body-on-frame).
I used to drive some early to mid-’80s Nissan hatchbacks (Stanza, Sentra, and Pulsar) which all had a two-piece cover over the cargo area. These were hard panels that raised with the hatch door in usual fashion, except that the forward 20% or so stayed in place, meaning the luggage opening was slightly smaller than had the cover been one-piece instead of 75%/25% split. The two pieces were hinged together. Anyway, the split design allowed a rear-seat passenger to reach over and pull the front 25% section upward to place a small item in the luggage compartment, and perhaps retrieve an item if it’s within reach. The size of the 25% part that swung open was larger and easier to reach than the Avanti trap door setup. I recall the arrangement I’m trying to describe was common on Japanese cars of the ’80s and ’90s but didn’t pay close attention to this feature so can’t be sure. But somebody must have thought rear passengers would want trunk access since this design cost more to implement than a one-piece cover would, with the hinge and 6 attachment points instead of just 2.
A good and surprisingly accurate overview of the Avanti given the short time Car Life had to learn about it; little that’s known now contradicts anything in the article. No mention of the enlarged R3 or R4 engines though – did those come later?
The pull-out vanity mirror and drawer in the glovebox was a favorite feature of Brooks Stevens that made it into the entire Studebaker range in ’63 including the Avanti. Despite what Lawlor writes near the end of the article, I think lots of women in the early ’60s would love to drive a sporty little number like this and not just be a passenger. Like the Dodge LaFemme, the glovebox vanity strikes me as a man’s idea of what women want in their cars.
One thing I still don’t get is why, given the Board of Directors’ intent of divesting into non-automotive industries, did they install Sherwood Egbert as president, someone who was gung-ho about saving the automotive division? I’m undecided if Egbert’s strategy was a good one though. The money used to bring the Avanti to market may have been better spent keeping their more mainstream models up to date. Still, the Avanti was undeniably impressive. Styling was truly leading-edge, with a curvy “Coke-bottle shape” that would be all over GM cars a few years later, and nearly everyone else’s cars a few years after that. I’m also amazed at how little obvious raiding of the Studebaker parts bin there was – obviously most mechanical parts carried over, but nearly everything you see – thing like switchgear, armrests, steering wheel, inside and outside door handles, seats, console, dash; none of those items were shared with other Studebakers. This was the only Stude to have the A/C vents built into the dash/console rather than hung underneath the dash like an aftermarket unit – on cars with the base engine anyway; the optional engines couldn’t be ordered with air because the supercharger got in the way of A/C components. That doesn’t explain why you couldn’t order a car with the normal-aspirated R4 and A/C, at least from what I understand. That would be how I’d spec mine.
Yes, those hadn’t been announced yet, and were never available in any numbers. Only nine Avantis got the R3 engine from the factory.
They weren’t expecting him to be. Egbert had no automotive background to speak of — he had been the EVP of McCulloch Corporation, which made chainsaws and stuff like that — and his understanding of the complexities of automotive tooling lead times was very limited. He was a fairly young guy and a go-getter, so I assume the board expected him to shake up the entrenched old-school auto industry types, but I really don’t think they anticipated that he would become so enthusiastic about trying to revitalize the business rather than proclaiming it hopeless and winding things down.
It was not an either-or situation. The Avanti was developed on a shoestring, VERY quickly, and its purpose was to buy time to get the mainstream models up to date. It was also intended as proof of life: People had seen Studebaker as hopelessly moribund for years, and a bad bet except for cheapskates. THe point of the Avanti and GT Hawk was to announce, “We’re still here, we’re doing exciting things, just wait.”
I’m sure it’s all been said before, but if Loewy “was just ridiculous with (drawing) cars”, then this public argument of a car, rendered permanent in fibreglass, must surely be his work alone. Not one bit likes the other, a poignant matter when one considers that the oldest collection of the combined whole panelwork has had to cling in bad marriage to each other for over 60 years. Best can be said is that the appalling Streets-of-Loraymo progenitor is worse (and sacreligious for being built on a holy Lancia base).
This thing IS just another bucketed luxo: the only “more” of “so much” which Car Life’s header should’ve had, for accuracy, was the qualifiers “little” and “not” in prefix to each descriptor respectively.
Thank you. I’ve been baffled over the years by what seems to be virtually universal admiration for this car which I simply don’t get, with the longevity of it and its “continuations” being even more baffling. The exterior design doesn’t work (for me) and while the interior is maybe interesting, there’s nothing there that for example the Thunderbird doesn’t do better (for me). The engine doesn’t seem to be as competitive as it could be, and alright, it has front disc brakes, but then doesn’t have them to the rear.
And yes, accessing that mail slot on the rear deck in no way seems to be easier or more convenient for the typical fully grown owner not dressed in Lycra or fleece than simply exiting and popping the trunk lid or jamming something small under the seat or in the glove box. I had to re-examine the pictures to be certain that there was actually a trunk lid as opposed to say, the Corvette. Simply a pointless “feature” that I’d venture some owners didn’t even realize existed.
We can make a deal – I’ll take this and you can have anything designed by Giugiaro in the 80’s. 🙂
Yes, the Jaguars had rear disc brakes, so their handbrake/parking brake was rubbish – it took a few years to sort out that detail.But unless you were racing, rear drums were fine.
I was too young to drive when the Avanti was launched, but from ‘across the pond’ I thought it was really nice – even though I knew its’ underpinnings were average.
Another excellent analysis, of a quality period review. Thank you!
When I first saw the Avanti as a kid in the 1970s, I wondered at the time, why they didn’t give it a proper ‘face’. Beautiful in profile, and rear-quarter views. The somewhat anonymous flat-nosed face, did little for me. I felt then, it could have been a genuine timeless classic design, if it had more character. As the nose of a car is also a tremendous designer’s palette, that allows this.
Studebaker’s stylized ‘S’ logo was outstanding. Could have really helped build the brand’s strength. Like the Mercedes star. And Audi’s rings.
Rivian R1T pickup nose, gives me the same vibe today. Like a missed opportunity, to better engage one’s emotional attachment to an auto. Towards it being more adopted, and loved by car enthusiasts. And the general public.
I felt the Avanti deserved a more defining nose. Worthy of the remainder of the ground-breaking, and timeless design. It would have been worth it.
I have never seen this report before and it makes for interesting reading. One curiosity – the mention of a 3 speed manual as the standard gearbox. I cannot recall ever hearing of this before, and I wonder if the 3 speed went away before production actually started. Or maybe it was theoretically available, but none were ordered that way. If one was ever built I have never read about it.
LA673 makes a great point – almost nothing the customer touched was from the Studebaker parts bin. The company had been using the same combinations of switches, handles and other controls for years, but none of those parts were used in the Avanti. Things like door handles, steering wheels and the rest all looked and felt modern and top-shelf. I really think the car’s interior was as nice as anything being built in its era – quite an achievement given the budget and time constraints the company was under.
I can’t say that I remember exactly when these came out, but I do remember being aware of them by 1963 – 64 and they really seemed pretty special, at least visually, to seven or eight year old me. Part of that was the styling, so clean and different compared to the C1 Corvettes which were far more common sights than the still-new C2 Sting Ray. And part was the rarity … it was exciting to spot one, a rare occurrence in contrast to other sports cars like the Vette as well as MG, TR3, Austin Healy etc. Maybe even less common than spotting a Jaguar XKE (as we called the E Type). Somewhat like seeing a Ferrari or Lamborghini today.
About 25 years ago I had the chance for a short ride in an Avanti, I think a newer Avanti II. I don’t remember much about it, but my then-young kids had no problem with the rear seat headroom.
I came along five years after Studebaker quit selling cars, but I’ve always had a soft spot for them. Love the “lazy S” logo. The GT Hawk and Avanti are two of my favorites, and I’d rank the Avanti up there with the 1961 Lincoln Continental as one of the best styled American cars of all time. Very European, just like the Continental. Simple and elegant. RIP Studebaker, you’ll never be forgotten.
I always enjoy reading of people’s reactions to the Avanti. My dad was the project design lead in Palm Springs and was a VP at with the Loewy organization. Say what you will about the design but in 1963 the car was light years removed from almost anything on the streets at the time.
A few tidbits, the 64′ square headlight surrounds were ‘taped up’ on my dad’s Avanti on our driveway on Long Island. Another tid bit was that Loewy’s custom jaguar and BMW always needed some tinkering and he always had my father take them home to work on… made quite the impression on me! If you look up the jaguar you can see just how unique it was – driving with my dad on Long Island in that car was a kid’s dream. The BMW had knock off spinners on the wheels which required my dad to carry a rubber mallet in the car (I was young but he said it was to make sure they stayed on!)
Fun read thanks!
Robert,
I think I read that your dad came up with the simple wire grille which wasn’t initially installed and he got a charcoal grille company to make the thing. I have always considered these to be modern art and I appreciated it from the start. Then as now beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
@ Robert Ebstein..I was good friends with your Dad here in S Fla, Robert..What a great guy. A super talented designer, as well as a highly skilled early pioneer with airbrushing, on top of many other design talents. I miss our talks..And I’m 100% in agreement with you about the gorgeous Avanti-I own three of them.
Thanks! My brothers and I each have one of my father’s airbrush renderings. I have my favorite which is a streamlined locomotive done for presentation to the Pennsylvania Rail Road. I believe the rendering (looks just like a photo) took him months to complete!
Your father was a man ahead of his time. You should be proud.
As a boy, I was fascinated by the Avanti. That they didn’t exist in our small town only reinforced that fascination. Heck – we hadn’t even had a Studebaker dealer since the early 1950s. My memories of the Avanti are strong – but totally divorced from reality in a way perhaps only a preteen boy can imagine.
I was at Boy Scout camp the summer of ’63. Most my age were into cars and talked about them often. Wanting to seem “cooler” than I really was, I lied and said my parents had ordered an Avanti and were waiting for it to come.
If only.
As stories are apt to do, my original lie quickly got out of control and spread much further than I ever intended. Quite a few fellow scouts had heard of the Avanti. They were of two minds. Those that knew my family never quite believed the story. They awaited final proof my story was all BS.
Others genuinely wanted to see an Avanti. They eagerly awaited its arrival. I received many a request that I should ask my parents to them sit in it when pickup day came at the end of camp.
Pickup day was the moment of truth. When my mom pulled up in our Rambler American, an audience awaited. I think my Mom was a bit taken aback that so many scouts were awaiting her arrival. I remember her asking if she was supposed to give someone else a ride. I mumbled something about them wanting to see our car – which surprised her even more. She knew our Rambler was anything but cool.
Anyway, pickup involved a lot of hooting and teasing from those that never believed the story. On the other side, there was a lot of disappointment from those who had believed. It was a moment that properly shamed me. I learned a valuable lesson about the idiocy of pretending to be someone you’re not.
No one in my family had Studebakers, but I’ve long had an appreciation for the Studebaker Avanti. It was boldly different, which tended to be a Studebaker thing. Also have a big appreciation for the entire Studebaker lineup especially in the ’62-64 model years. Sherwood Egbert made the cars much-more interesting IMHO.
I’ve vascillated over the years, but at this point I prefer the “square headlight” ’64 Avanti, particularly the latest serial numbers which had the thick seat backs.
Dad’s 63 R2 4 speed ate blower bearings for breakfast. He ran it a lot with the blower belt off. He let me drive it once, and only once – would you let your teenager with 4 weeks experience behind the wheel? At 110 mph it set me solidly back into the seat when goosed. Brakes and stability at speed were unreal for 1963
A stunning example with a backstory recently sold on Bring A Trailer. I have loved these cars for 61 years.
As a car-crazed boy entering the fifth grade in the fall of 1962, I was well aware of the new Avanti and Corvette Sting Ray, along with my like-minded friends. I would have been all over this magazine article if I had known of its existence. As we know from CC, 1963 was a memorable year in American Automotive history with the introduction of these cars as well as the Buick Riviera and the stacked-headlight large Pontiacs, including the stunning Grand Prix.
I have a copy of Lowey’s book “Industrial Design” it contains some of Lowey’s drawing and based on those he wasn’t very good at drawing cars. The Avanti is still my favorite automobile from the ’60s, it’s styling was totally unique-I think it was the first car design to feature the long hood short trunk design which Ford copied.
Egbert must have been quite a salesman as everything I have read indicates the Studebaker BOD brought him in to close down the automotive division and he ended up bringing forth the the Hawk GT and the Avanti.
With regards and respect to the musings of those who suggest the resources assigned to the Avanti project being better spent on models with broader appeal, I offer the following: How many in depth articles written in 2024 have you seen about the Lark, or the Golden Hawk or ANY Studebaker offering?? That the Avanti still fascinates us after six decades validates the effort and the expense to produce it. The fact it lived on for another 30+ years confirms it’s timeless design and it’s status as both art and automobile.
Also, the Avanti was the only automobile to be exhibited at the MOMA(Museum of Modern Art). I would love to see the Avanti resurrected as an EV.
Not accurate; their first exhibit that included automobiles was in 1951, entitled 8 automobiles: an exhibition concerned with the esthetics of motorcar design. The first automobile to become part of the Museum’s permanent collection was a 1946 Cisitalia 202 GT in 1972.
I cannot locate any record of an Avanti being physically exhibited at MoMA; there is record of photographs of the Avanti displayed as part of the 1966 exhibition The Racing Car: Toward a Rational Automobile, but that is the extent of which it seems to be.
As a kid, growing up and liking unusual cars, I had read about the Avanti in Popular Science long before I ever saw one. Also growing up in Ohio, we had the legendary Ohio State Highway Patrol, that at one time had clocked an Avanti at 161 MPH, which, when you think about tire technology, and suspension technology back then-is absolutely scary!