HOME | DD
SwiftysGarage — Avanti
Published: 2014-06-06 02:50:11 +0000 UTC; Views: 555; Favourites: 32; Downloads: 7
Redirect to original
Description
1963 Studebaker Avanti R2 (supercharged)Related content
Comments: 15
I was so confused at what this was when I first saw this thing with my grandfather
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Studebaker was doing a lot with superchargers at the time. Had they stuck in the car business just a bit longer their muscle cars (and yes, they made muscle cars) would be better known today.
www.hemmings.com/magazine/mus/…
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
That's an interesting case of what cold have been.......
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
This looks like a VERY clean example, similar to one I saw many years ago around Reading. The original Avanti's lines with the round headlights really are iconic, clean and lovely. Great find, thanks for sharing this!
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
This is a very nice example. The car currently resides in the Harrisburg area (and the show was outside Lebanon, which is about halfway between Reading and Harrisburg) so it may very well be the same one.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
I saw it around 1984, and the one thing that sticks in my mind when I looked at it was the instrument panel being very different from most vehicles of that era, with the background of the instruments being white or silvery with black numerals and marks and not black with white.. I do know one of the innovations of the Avanti was the use of red lighting at night to illuminate the instruments like an aircraft rather than the more normal yellow oir white light.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
In a perfect world, this is the car that should have saved Studebaker. In reality, a sports car wasn't what an ailing automaker needed to spend money on. By the time they got the car to production it was too late.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
It was a brilliant Halo car, pretty much a response to the Corvette and T-Bird, but more in the Grand Touring niche than Sports car or fast, kind of sporty sedan the T-Bird morphed into by 1958ish. Reading between the lines, Studebaker just couldn't deal with a very fast moving Ford and GM who were cutting prices, and they were thinking too short term.
Evidently the Canadian operation turned a profit, but not enough to justify continuance- but the whole thing was also evidently a ruse to wind down the company regardless. In essence, a lot of really bad management at the top for years after WW2.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
So true. Packard's purchase of Studebaker has to be among the top management blunders of all time. They really should've joined forces with American Motors... Too bad Nance passed away at that crucial time and his vision for a four way merger died with him.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
From what I read the idea would have been to join and create a counter to GM. It might have worked, too!
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Yup! Nash-Studebaker-Hudson-Packard to counter Chevy-Pontiac-Olds/Buick-Cadillac. Had it gone through they would've been bigger than Chrysler (which was suffering its own financial difficulties at the time). Add in Jeep from Kaiser-Willys since AMC ended up with them eventually anyway and you've got a powerhouse.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
An interesting"What-if"- now all that's left are the various relics you get to see at car shows. Frankly, it would have been good at this point in time to have more competition, but further downsizing of the number of vehicle companies is possible.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0