The Studebaker Avanti was a personal luxury coupe built by Studebaker between June 1962 and December 1963. Designed in a forty-day crash program by Raymond Loewy’s team, it had a fiberglass body on a modified Lark chassis and was sold as “America’s only four-passenger high-performance personal car”.
Studebaker Avanti at a glance
| Maker | Studebaker Corporation, South Bend, Indiana |
|---|---|
| Production | June 1962 – December 1963 |
| Designer | Raymond Loewy with Tom Kellogg, Bob Andrews and John Ebstein |
| Body | fiberglass, built by Molded Fiberglass Body in Ashtabula, Ohio |
| Chassis | modified Studebaker Lark 109-inch convertible |
| Engine | modified 289 cu in Hawk V8; Paxton supercharger optional |
| Brakes | front discs, first on an American production car |
| Name | Italian for “forward” or “onward” |
| Introduced | 26 April 1962, New York International Automobile Show |
| Planned output | 20,000 for 1962 |
| Actual output | about 1,200 in 1962 |
| Speed records | 29 set at the Bonneville Salt Flats |
Based on one source, the English Wikipedia article on the Studebaker Avanti.
History of the Studebaker Avanti
The Avanti was developed at the direction of Studebaker president Sherwood Egbert, who took over in February 1961. The car was meant to answer Ford’s Thunderbird and to lift the maker’s sagging performance image; the first design theme is said to have been sketched by Egbert on the back of an envelope during a flight.
Raymond Loewy’s team, with Tom Kellogg, Bob Andrews and John Ebstein, worked on a forty-day crash program. The stylists finished a scale model in eight days with two different sides, one a two-place sports car and the other a four-seat GT coupe; the four-seat layout won. Loewy wanted a low, long-hood, short-deck semi-fastback coupe with a grilleless nose, a wasp-waisted rear and a shape suggesting a supersonic aircraft.
The complex body would have been difficult and expensive to press in steel, so the exterior panels were moulded in glass-reinforced plastic by Molded Fiberglass Body of Ashtabula, Ohio, the company that had built the panels for the 1953 Chevrolet Corvette. The chassis was a modified Studebaker Lark convertible unit with a 109-inch wheelbase, and power came from a modified 289 cubic inch Hawk V8 with an optional Paxton supercharger.
The Avanti was introduced on 26 April 1962 at the New York International Automobile Show and at Studebaker’s annual shareholders’ meeting. Rodger Ward, winner of the 1962 Indianapolis 500, received one as part of his prize and became its first private owner. Production problems with the supplier, fit and finish caused delays and cancelled orders: Egbert planned 20,000 cars for 1962 but only about 1,200 could be built. Production ended when the South Bend factory closed on 20 December 1963.
Design and features
- Fiberglass body: a shape too costly for steel, moulded by the same supplier as the early Corvette.
- Front disc brakes: British Dunlop design built under licence by Bendix, the first on an American production model.
- Bottom breather nose: air entered from under the front rather than through a conventional grille, a layout that became common after the 1980s.
- Record breaking: a modified Avanti with the supercharged R3 engine reached over 170 mph at Bonneville and broke 29 world speed records.
Studebaker Avanti versions
- Avanti (1962–1963): the standard coupe with the 289 V8.
- Supercharged cars: Paxton blower offered as an option.
- R3 record car: the modified supercharged version used for the Bonneville runs.
- Later derivatives: after 1963 the name and tooling passed to five successive ventures that built modified versions through 2006.
The Avanti was the halo car of the Studebaker range, and its story continued with the hand-built Avanti II.
Sources
- Studebaker Avanti, English Wikipedia: design, launch, production, records
