Studebaker has the oldest and most fascinating history of any American car company, in the world really. NO car company BUT Studebaker successfully went from wagon -carriage builder to car company. It survived 3 centuries, or it's derivative Avanti's, which has been out of production since 2007. Then only because of the CEO'S legal issues. Hopefully, we'll see another famous Avanti comeback.
They were the largest wagon manufacturer in the world at one time. I believe a great number of the Conestoga wagons used by the pioneers were Studebakers and it is no coincidence that Studebaker used that name on a station wagon. Abraham Lincoln went to Ford Theater in a Studebaker carriage. It also allows the unique situation for some who don't like Studebakers to say things like "Studebaker vehicles went downhill when the took the hitch off the front." (I've heard that more than once.) And for the Studebaker Avanti, some have said "It rides like a lumber wagon." I have one, and that is actually not entirely untrue. On another note showing their longevity is their military involvement. They had a contract to provide wagons to the Union Army during the Civil War. Then, in WWII, they produced a vast number of 2 1/2 ton trucks mainly for the Soviet Union. One "top ten" TV show or something about "Most important weapons of WWII" or such had the atomic bomb first, of course. But had the Studebaker truck as 10th. It allowed the USSR to suddenly become mechanized when their army had still been pulling wagons with animals. This made a massive shift in the USSR's capabilities, much to the chagrin of the Germans. Studebaker's other WWII vehicle was the "Weasel".
Thanks, always a special story with Studebaker.....I am interested in The Story... etc. From Warsaw IND area :born, .....a lifetime ever since My Great Aunts HAWK IN SBend, to seeing first AVANTI, TO Larks, Presidents,Packards......
Sadly from 2030 on all combustion cars, trucks and busses including classics will be banned from public streets in entire EU and Scandinavia :-( In Germany the Green Peoples Party gave order to shorten fuel supply from 2025 on by reducing petrol stations to only one state operated central gas station per city. From 2027 on in the EU certain car spare parts will be banned too....as exhaust systems, turbo chargers and even some engine and gearbox oils...California and New York will do the same from 2027 on.... So no investments should be done in oil burning cars any longer....They even created a new kind of crime here, called emissions and smoke crime.
Too bad they tore down the Avanti building at the museum. The car was designed in Palm springs California and it was supposed to go after mg and what the story is told by me actually my father got to do the 1963 Studebaker car catalogs for the artwork and met the designers and he told me that they basically got a Corvette and they put the body on a Corvette running gear and then when Chevrolet found out about it because his two brothers were engineers at Chevrolet that they were going to sue thems but they said a lot of court the frame and suspension came from a Studebaker wagoneer
The Studebaker was most certainly not designed as a body on a Corvette frame or anything like that. It was designed from the beginning to be on a Studebaker Lark Convertible frame. This was to have the extra strength of the X member that frame has due to the car being made of Fiberglass. (Further strengthening is from the addition of frame torsion boxes are nicknamed "hog troughs".) The design done in Palm Springs didn't produce an operating car at all at that time. Just a clay model to present to the board of directors. Also, since they designed the car in 1961, the Corvette at that time had a wheelbase of 102 inches, and the Avanti is 109 inches. Studebaker certainly had no need for a Corvette anything. The only connection I am aware of to the Corvette is that Studebaker initially had the Fiberglas bodies made at the Molded Fiberglas Co. in Ashtabula, Ohio which was also making Corvette bodies. But due to quality problems, Studebaker brought making the bodies in-house to South Bend. Of course, never having made fiberglass bodies before, they had a number of their own quality problems with it.
I feel that someone with billions of dollars to invest in an electric car/truck project should maybe think about buying the Studebaker Brand Name and reintroducing that product as advanced vehicles.
