This isn’t really Ford trucks but its old stuff; I went to the Cowpens battle field in Chesnee S.C. we ate lunch at The Bantam Chef which is a 40 year old establishment with a small museum in it. There is a shelf with a lot of old radios really old. There are several old gas pumps from the really tall glass one to the ones with the square ones with the round glass/plastic top. There was a really nice Studebaker I think 53-55 it looked almost mint, also a BMW car with a 1 cylinder engine really small which boasts 80+ mpg. Two old motorcycles, horseless carriage, juke boxes, old license plates nailed to the walls. There were lots of pictures of Studebakers there was even a Popeye cartoon that mentioned a Studerburger. The walls are filled with interesting articles about the restaurant and famous pictures (people). I talked to a waitress and she said the owner owns a lot of Studebakers & sure enough there was a picture of his shop & Studebakers. The food was great and very inexpensive I couldn’t eat the entire meal.

 

The cars you tend to remember most were those that paralleled your youth.
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Studebaker was innovative in many ways. The styling was advanced especially with the Hawk and Avanti. They had factory installed superchargers during the early 60’s.
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Then came the Lark; biggest POS that I ever owned. It looked like a brick with wheels. The grill as so cheap and thin you could grate cheese on it. I bought it from a junk car dealer for $100 during the late sixties for my last year in college. It was a forest ranger’s car; seems the government bought a lot of Larks to help an ailing company survive.
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Today, if they still existed, they could have received a government bailout.

 

Blown Studebakers

1957/58 289 4V Golden Hawk (McCollough Supercharged)

1963/64 289 4V R2 Lark, Hawk, Avanti (Paxton Supercharged)

1963/64 305 2X4V R4 Lark, Hawk, Avanti (Paxton Supercharged)

1963/64 305 2X4V R5 Lark, Hawk, Avanti (Dual Paxton Supercharged)

The Hawk and Avanti, the 1939/41's, 1947/51's, 1953/54's were all styled by Raymond Loewy, an outside design firm that Studebaker hired over the years to style their cars.

The Avanti was the brainchild of Studebaker president Sherwood Egbert, who set up a crack team of 5 men who, while isolated in a Palm Springs house, designed and styled the Avanti in 30 days.

The chassis used was from the 1960/62 Lark convertible. The decision to go with fibreglass saved weight, but Studebakers choice of who they contracted with to supply the bodies killed the car from the beginning.

Studebakers body maker of choice? Ashtabula Fiberglass, the same company that supplied Chevrolet with Corvette bodies.

Who got the lions share of the business? GM of course. With next to no bodies, less than 5,000 1963/64 Avanti's were sold.

If they could have gotten a steady stream of bodies, Studebaker could have sold over 50,000 Avanti's in 1963 alone, as that was how many orders they received for the car before a single one was built.

After Studebaker moved to Canada in late 1963, Leo Newman & Nate Altman, Studebakers dealer in South Bend, bought the right to the Avanti, sold them for years afterwards...with Corvette engines/transmissions installed instead of the Studebaker engines/transmissions used 1963/64.

1962 US Forest Service Larks. 500 were sold in CA by Frank H. Afton Studebaker in Inglewood CA. The cars were dark green 4 door sedans with H/D 259 V8's.

The Forest Service also bought 100's of Studebaker Trucks

The vehicles were delivered to the US Forest Service main office in downtown LA.

I personally delivered at least 10 of them, as at that time, I was working as a Studebaker partsman for Afton.

 

Wow great & interesting info Bill, the car that was on displat had a grill that looked like a chrome turbo engine, I think thay had one like it in the movie "Rocket Man"

 

1950 or 1951.

It doesn't take a Rocket Man (Scientist) to figure out that I've owned more than my fair share of Studebakers.

Around 40 the last time I counted up all the old rolling piles of misery I've owned over the past 50 years.

Only ONE was a Lark, and it was bought for a parts car.

 

I have my wifes 63 avanti that is the R2 supercharged 289. I also live in Ashtabula and that is where the bodies were made. I turned down a job by Cafaro to run the paint dept. at the avanti2 plant in Youngstown,Ohio.
I am always swamped with folks telling me about the avanti---at local car shows. Our car was from Monterrey,California and has 61k on the speedo.
It ran 130 on a straight-away 4 yrs ago and had alot more to give. I heard top speed was 155. I also heard that the back window can blow out at high speed. I have pics in my gallery. COOL CARS. AHEAD OF THEIR TIME!!
Number Dummy and John Myers are my heroes!!! Bill

 

When Nate Altman, the driving force behind the Avanti II passed away, the company was sold to that so and so Carfaro.

He then moved production to Ohio, p!ssing off all the old former Studebaker employees Altman had hired, who had hand built between 350-400 Avanti II's a year.

Sales dropped to near nothing after the Ohio move.

The company was sold and resold, finally ending up in Villa Rica GA, where the owner, who also owned beach resorts in Cancun Mexico, resided.

The company went on the auction block several years ago. Dunno if anyone bought it...or not.

By that time the Avanti II had ceased to exist, the new Avanti was now based on a PONTIAC TRANS AM.

No one (in their right mind) bought the ugly TERD!

The GA owner also developed at great expense, a huge SUV, calling it a STUDEBAKER.

Only the prototype was built, and the pile looked so much like a H1 HUMMER, that GM sued the dumb cluck. What the hell was he thinking?

It wasn't long before the owner, his resorts...the whole shebang went bankrupt.
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Bill,

The Studebaker dealer was not in Monterey, CA. It was in Watsonville, several miles north.

Crawley & Traulson was the name. In 1971, I bought their entire stock of Studebaker and Packard parts for....are you ready? 20 DOLLARS!

I sold most of the parts at Harrah's Reno swapmeet, as that was where I was headed to. I attended this meet from 1966 thru 1977, usually stopping at Ford, and former Studebaker and Packard dealers along the way.

I made a PILE of MONEY on those parts. Most of the Packard stuff was from the 1930's/1940's.

 

Your story was an enlightening piece of history.
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After reading, I would have to say your moniker is more a malapropism than an oxymoron.

 

I'm known as the Walking Encyclopedia among FTE's SoCal Chapter members, while another FTE SoCal Chapter member (fun_suv) is known as the Walking Atlas.

Both of us should spend far more time walking than sitting, if you catch my drift.

To paraphrase Will Rogers: We never met a meal we didn't like!

 

Bill, Thanks for the history lesson! A small one man shop near my neighborhood just completed a 1962? stude restoration. It was an absolute pile of rust when he started. Did an amazing job-in black!
I managed to make it to Reno in 1977 when I lived in Campbell Ca. Didn't Bill Harrah die shortly after the 1977 meet? It seems to me that the auctions were in the early 80's of the majority of his collection.

 

Bill Harrah died on Saturday night while the meet was still going on.

Because of this, the car show was cancelled on Sunday.

The family wanted no part of the collection, the casino's and the hotels. They sold the entire kit and kaboddle to Holiday Inns.

Only a "few" hundred of the cars were left after the auctions.

Harrah had planned this all along, these cars were the untouchables, and were used to form the National Auto Museum that still exists in Reno at the old ice house, where his collection was housed originally.

The "around the world" Thomas Flyer is one of the cars that remains. The Imperial Place in Vegas bought all the Duesenbergs but one, which was retained.

Harrah began collecting when he operated an (illegal) Bingo Parlor in Venice CA. Bought his first old cars there in 1948. One was a REO, what the other was, I forget.

 

Bill, I had forgotten that he died that night (Saturday night?). My wife who was with me in Reno did remember. I only saw the collection once (on that trip-I am glad that I did) and I think it was that afternoon. The trip to Reno was on my 10th anniversary. What a guy, I took my wife to the Reno swap meet for our tenth anniversary!
I had a friend that owned a 1909 K Thomas Flyer (I got to drive it a few thimes-it was some car). He sold it to a Brit that stopped in New England on his way back from one of the Harrah's auctions having bought the K Thomas bodyless chassis that was in the auction. This gent wanted to retrace the round the world race in a Thomas Flyer. He ended up buying my friends car also on that trip. The Thomas was big bucks even back then. Last I knew that car was back in USA in San Jose (It was red at that time). It came back to New England for an HCCA tour in the early 90's. That was the last time that I saw it.