The post-Studebaker Avanti saga is a long and convoluted one, and it ended with its final owner, Michael Kelly being arrested for running a large Ponzi scheme. Given that this was the final Avanti, essentially a disguised Mustang, it couldn’t have ended soon enough. How tired we got of hearing about the latest resurrection of Avanti.
Kelly owned Avanti twice; the first time, bought it out of bankruptcy in 1986 or so, after Stephen Blake’s go at it starting in 1981–with $1.9 million in aid from the State of Indiana–fizzled out. Kelly didn’t keep it long; already in 1987 he sold it to John Cafaro, who finagled aid from the state of Ohio to move production there. That all petered out in 1991.
We might have hoped that Avanti had finally been put to rest, but like a zombie, it was resurrected by Kelly in 1999, and moved operations to Georgia. Was state aid involved again?
In 2006, operations were moved to Cancun, Mexico (why Cancun?), but it was all very short-lived. He and some other partners were arrested for running a giant Ponzi scheme that allegedly defrauded seniors of some $342 million. He went to prison and his offshore assets were liquidated to make partial restitution to his victims. He died of cancer in 2013.
Putting on the novelty glasses with the nose, mustache and eyebrows doesn’t make you Groucho Marx.
The story of Avanti permitted this ruse. No one is trying to sell anyone on the resurrection of Rambler. Avanti was built after Studebaker ended auto manufacturing. It was not a big operation, but it seemed to have spun a story around them like Avanti was a ghost many people claimed to have seen. Auto magazines would trot out stuff that gave more than a few folks the impression that a new Avanti could be offered. This set a stage for shadowy frauds to exist. Collectors of real Studebaker Avanti cars gave the Avanti a bigger than life legend and cashed in on the exclusivity of these cars.
So we got an odd kind of auto cult surrounding this brand that most cars never get. This makes it ripe for fraud. What will end it is the market for this mythological car, dying off.
What P.T. Barnum said all those years ago still hold so true.
I believe Studebaker made two of the most beautiful cars ever. The ’53 coupe and the original Avanti. The first generation Avanti II’s were a real attempt to keep it going even though much of the magic was lost in the details. But this, between this and the early 90’s four door sedan…. Has any other car been so debased by hucksters out to make a buck?
“Has any other car been so debased by hucksters out to make a buck?”
Well, Northern Ireland ended up on the hook for the entire Delorean plant, so… yes.
To the tune of $138US million lost from the UK Treasury, he wins hands-down. This article from the Irish Times covers a 2014 academic investigation into the debacle, and shows his hucksterism to be entire. Worse, he blamed the failure on the Northern Ireland conflict, which wasn’t true, and it put off future possible investors from that (then) very depressed area.
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/back-to-the-failure-belfast-s-77-million-sports-car-1.2010638
It looks like a low-grade offering from Mitsuoka.
THIS! Allls we need now is a post from Tatra!
Mitsuoka would make a better job of it but smaller using a Nissan Micra as the base
Lol, well said Bryce!
Viewnt.
Aviewnti.
Brilliant! 😀
+1
Yellow was the perfect color for this plastic smiley face, wasn’t it? I laughed the whole time while “shopping” the image 🙂
I’m not as offended by it as some folks seem to be. It strikes me as a lot like the 11th-gen Thunderbird.
I don’t hate this, either. It’s not my favorite, but it’s got strong Avanti identity. I had to look up examples of the ’05 online, and even the dashboard appears to have been inspired by the original. The door cards and seats are stock Mustang, but I wouldn’t want original Stude-style seats in my reborn edition.
The F body ones looked proportionally better, the Mustang based ones are way too thick in the middle
Avanti continuations are the Elvis impersonator of of cars, and largely followed the same trajectory into parody.
Other automotive ventures that got government aid come to mind: Bricklin (Nova Scotia, Canada), DeLorean (Northern Ireland). That didn’t work out so well either.
As a fan and owner of Studebakers from the sixties, I find the Avanti story really rather remarkable. It’s kind of like Michael Myers from the “Halloween” movies; for decades it seemed to refuse to die. After the originals I never cared enough to consider buying one, but I have to tip my hat to Nathan Altman, who had sold Packards and Edsels before Studebakers and personally liked the Avanti so much he decided to build them and sell them while Studebaker was still in business. It’s utterly amazing to me that he could get financing near the time of Studebaker’s U.S. manufacturing collapse, and that Studebaker would allow the car to be built while they were still building cars in Hamilton, Ontario.
Oy gevault. I had no idea, and I preferred things that way.
I’ve walked by one in a body shop yard for years, now. Actually sunk into the asphalt up to the rims/frame, leaves under there. Approximate ’70s square light.
Thirty years on display in Toronto (Dupont/Shaw) and nobody’s been tempted by the project.
The front end reminds me of this:
😳
Dead on!
Of all the Avanti’s great design elements why did they keep that ugly grill-less front end? After they rounded up and locked the designers away someone got real hungry. They unknowingly found the magic brownies and crushed a months worth in one day. They clearly started at the front end and worked towards the rear end. Seeing an Avanti in the wild is always a mixed blessing. Everything’s great until it backs out of a parking spot and I get a glimpse of the grill-less font end. I look forward to the day an electric car get the grill-less front end right. Aside from mid-engine exotics pretty much all cars design including electric have a vestigial grill of some sort.
Cars and shysters. An inevitable match.
Indeed. Most recent example being the gigantic Volkswagen group and their wilfully poisonous diesels.
All of the debased knockoffs were unfortunate. Why not build exact replicas of the original? Your choice of round or square headlights. The Studebaker Museum has a four door prototype body shell in storage.That’s the template that should have been used for any “new” four door version.
First thing, I have to admit I never understood the appeal of the original, let alone the ones from later on. I had two neighbors with original ones. One was at least a decent color, red, but the other one was a horrible tan. I rode in the red one once and nothing about it made me think, “This is what my dad should get!”, unlike other neighbor’s and friend’s Chargers, Roadrunners, Chevelles, 442s, GTOs, and of course, the Z-28’s and Trans Am’s. IMO, the original was just awkward looking and the blank front end did nothing to help it. My dad, who was older, went off course, and bought a ’68 Imperial, which I had no love of.
Regarding cars without grilles, I like the styling of the Citroen DS, Jaguar E type and Porsche 911, only the last of which didn’t need a grille.
Is it because these are all fastback shapes? The lack of grille doesn’t work so well on a three box car, you can’t tell from a distance which way the car is pointing.
I think it’s parental influence, growing up in 1960’s England half the cars on the road – Humber, MG, Riley, Singer, Sunbeam, Wolseley, Vanden Plas would have some sort of faux chrome grille slapped on the front. My mother regarded this as pretension and ostentation, we had VW, Morris or Austin; no grille at all or some painted metal bars or a bit of aluminium mesh.
If someone was to revive the original but as an EV, I’d be tempted. My wife would of course sue for divorce.
Egad, the face of that car says “please crush me”
This popped up.
I’d have no interest in this Mustang- based kit car. But I’m a big fan of the original Avanti and the older Avanti II. What’s not to love about a plucky underdog car ahead of its time?
Lana Del Rey, featured a ’63 in her recent video, ironically titled “White Mustang “.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=F4ELqraXx-U
Lana Del Rey loves all things ’60s; I love how the vintage style of her music (and videos) clash with the lyrics about decidedly modern things. Oh, and the Avanti looks great in that video. The square-headlamp bezel version would have looked all wrong.