Canadiancatgreen’s car show download at the Cohort includes some very fine Studebakers. It’s past bedtime here, and I’m being kicked off the computer, but maybe Jim will jump in and ID the year and model of these gems. [And so I shall – like this one-year-only 1952 Starliner hardtop.]
A Packardbaker [a 1958]
[1951 Champion 2 door sedan.]
[The year of this truck is anyone’s guess, but certainly some time between 1949 and 1964.]
[Another mystery car – the trunk lid and lack of fins says 1956 Flight or Power Hawk but parts have a way of moving from one car to another among the Studebaker faithful.]
Not a genuine Stude, but there’s some in the background
The ’64 Daytona tail lights look like first generation Saturn SL’s.
Oh, so close. 65 Daytona is my favourite, because it has a 283 Chev instead of the Stude V8
A wonderful selection though. That Packardbaker just oozes desperation even today.
Yes, I have to peg the Daytona sedan as a 64. I see a two tone steering wheel, which I had understood went away at the end of South Bend production, which should make this an early 64-model Indiana car. And for those of us from the Hoosier state, a “real” Studebaker must be equipped with that ungodly heavy, leaky, Stude engine. 🙂
We had neighbors in Iowa City who were Germans and she drove a beautiful ’64 Daytona coupe. He was the top professor in the hydraulics institute there and drove a Mercedes 220SE fintail. Nice combo, side by side.
Nice find on the 52. They get lost between the bullet noses and the 53’s. Speaking of bullet noses, there was a recent discussion about what cars wore 5 mph the worst. The bullet nosed Stude should get an honorable mention even though it not a 5 mph bumper.
On that 64 Daytona convertible, the all-white steering wheel probably indicates this as one of the 286 that were built in Hamilton, Ontario. There are 6 Canadian-built Strato Blue convertibles accounted for on a registry for these. It is very similar to one of the 416 South Bend-built cars I saw at a local show last weekend, right down to the color.
Also, I have become a huge fan of that 1-year-only 1952 hardtop. That may be the best metal roof put on any car ever built over this body’s 6 year run.
That copper 57 is going to make me correct the caption I gave that picture. It is the low level Custom trim (as opposed to the DeLuxe) but it could be either a Champion or a Commander (6 or V8). The nameplate on the fender right near the headlight is the only way I would be able to tell which, and I cannot make it out from here, but I do not see anything that looks like the V8 emblem that would be next to the word “Commander”. That copper paint is a 1957-only color.
Thanks for the IDs.
Count me in as a fan of the ’52 hardtop. I’d be very happy in one. V8, Overdrive. 🙂
Those ’64 Daytonas are handsome cars. CC has successfully indoctrinated me into the cult of Studebaker during the years I’ve been hanging here.
Freak that I am, a ’58 Packardbaker has recently earned a spot in my dream garage. They’re just so weird and wacky I can’t resist.
“Freak that I am, a ’58 Packardbaker has recently earned a spot in my dream garage”
You are no freak, sir. 🙂 But I would hold out for the hardtop.
Pure freakish perfection!
Incidentally, for carspotting with an emphasis on some Packards from the heyday of the marque, the 2015 film “Carol” starring Kate Blanchet offers a treasure trove. The cinematography and period correct sets and wardrobe are amazing as well. It’s on Netflix. A nice film to settle into with a bottle of wine.
You can’t have mine!
Nice! Although I cannot quite make my mind up on that color, yours wears it as nicely as any I have ever seen.
Wow! Love it, more than ever. They should use your car as the featured car in some period tv show or movie, and really stump folks. Well, nowadays most viewers would be stumped anyway by ’58s, except maybe a Cadillac or Chevy.
Another one-year-only hardtop roof. It’s surprising the Hawk didn’t inherit it.
The picture shows a horrible detail I hadn’t noticed before on the horrible Packardbaker. The tacked-on quad pod COVERS UP part of the anodized side trim, while attempting to continue only one of the chrome strips. YAAARGH!
It would have been cheaper to keep building the ’57, which was a good-looking Commander if you didn’t try to think of it as a Packard.
Good call on the Packardbaker’s side trim. They couldn’t have done a more half-assed job with those headlight pods if they’d tried.
OTOH, I’ve always wondered about the chrome strips on the tops of the quarter panels of the Loewy coupes. I think they were there from the beginning and can’t believe it was a coincidence since they made it all-too-easy to tack-on some stubby fins when that became a thing in later years. If Studebaker had the foresight to see that coming, it was quite a brilliant cost-saving move to have existing quarter panels already prepped to add fins instead of a substantially more expensive restyle with new quarter panel stampings.
The Stude’s chrome strips cover a joint.
Studebaker’s body engineering goes back to the prewar philosophy which involved bolt on rear fenders. Every Stude until the end featured bolt-on rear quarters. The C/K coupes ended up with a ridge along the very top of the fender line which had to be covered by some kind of trim. Hawks’ fins rolled inward at the bottom to the edge of the deck lid and outward to the side of the quarter, which required a piece of trim along the joint where the fin was welded onto the old fender.
Interesting. I never would have guessed that the Lark had bolt-on rear fenders. Was Studebaker the last manufacturer to feature bolt-on rear fenders? Were there any actual benefit to such an archaic practice? It undoubtedly contributed to their highest-in-the-industry labor costs.
When did the other domestic manufacturers (mainly the Big 3) begin welding on their rear fenders/quarter panels? It seems like something that would go hand-in-hand with the switch to unibody construction.
Studebaker touted bolt-on fenders as a benefit in collision repair right up to the end. Also heavy objects in the trunk could not put a dent in the outer quarter panel. But yes, I would imagine that it was more expensive to build that way.
Checker is the only other one I can think of that was still building cars that way in the 60s. Well there was also VW, but those were still actual fenders.
I thought that collision repair might be the sole benefit to bolt-on sheetmetal. Still doesn’t seem like that great of an idea, particularly regarding assembly costs.
I’d forgotten that GM had returned to bolt-on, plastic body panels with the unlamented Pontiac Fiero. Of all the maladies that car suffered, I don’t recall the method of attaching the body being one of them. Not to mention that it was quite an effective method of converting one to a rather convincing Ferrari 308 (at least in appearance)..
I had always noticed that one of the two chrome strips doesn’t continue onto the headlamps pods, but assumed that the trim strip just ended there. Have we seen one with the headlight pod removed to confirm the trim strip continues underneath it? I don’t see why they’d do it that way, as I don’t think the strip was a carryover item from the previous year’s Packardbaker or any year Stude.
As far as I can tell, the Packardbaker’s front fender trim is recycled from the two-tone 1956 Studebaker President, while the tacked-on quad headlight nacelles are from the 1958 President which had a single, chrome spear fender molding. That’s why they don’t match.
Using front fender moldings from a car two years prior in an effort to make a new car look fresh is some major league penny-pinching, and gives a good idea what Studebaker was reduced to at that point. Of course, Studebaker wasn’t too interested in spending any money on new Packards, either, and it really showed with such shenanigans..
I think you’re right – I tried matching older models but missed that one. Studebaker re-used old parts all the time; my favorite was reusing the 1953 Starliner hubcaps on the ’63 Avanti and painting them to somewhat resemble mag wheels. The trunk lid on the ’58 Packard Hawk was just the ’53-55 trunk lid with a toilet-seat fake spare tire cover added to it.
The popularity of the hardtop body style and the end of the post-war seller’s market probably dictated the one-year-only Studebaker hardtop of 1952. The ’52 grille contained a hint of the grille that would grace the all-new 1953 Studebaker, led by the gorgeous Starliner coupe and hardtop. Certainly in today’s automotive market, no car company could make the business case for a one-year-specific model, and a limited-production one at that. I agree with JC that the ’52 Stude hardtop was that body generation’s finest example. It had very little in common with the ’47-style Starliner coupe with wrap-around backlight, and it had two distinct ends, a fitting riposte to the “which way is it going?” jokes about the earlier models.
Studebaker had originally planned its new model for 1952 – that would have been the year of the company’s centennial anniversary and the year it paced the Indy 500. But delays in development (no doubt caused by the decision to build the Lowey coupe and the resulting revision to the standard models to incorporate some of the Loewy coupe’s visual details) pushed the new car to 1953. That hardtop (as I understand it) was a cheap bodge-job that involved welding a newly designed metal roof to a convertible body. A few detail changes (like a wider back seat available because of the missing hardware for a folding top) and there you were. As quickly and as cheaply as it was done, it is amazing how perfect the result.
1958 brought a handsome one-year-only hardtop to the Studebaker (and Packard) line yet again. Here too I can’t justify the expense this must have brought given the low sales, especially since Studebaker already had a hardtop in the Hawk line.
I don’t think Stude intended for the 52 hardtop to be a low volume model. 🙂
Stude was at an all time sales peak, and hardtops sold for a significant premium, so it’s pretty reasonable to add a car for a year if the tooling is cheap, even if it’s a little expensive to manufacture. This was exactly the formula that Ford followed for its 51 hardtop, which sold 100K+ units. As long as folks are willing to pay for it, or stay in the family instead of going elsewhere, the business makes sense.
The most recent analog IMO was the first Cadillac Escalade. Cadillac dealers needed a product NOW, even if it was obviously a Yukon Denali with a Caddy badge. Normally, GM would not bother with a car for one year.
The Motor Muster was shockingly bereft of Studebakers this year. An original 52 Champion with badly worn paint, which is there every year, and a Packardbaker Hawk, and the real star of the show.
The Loewy coupes were nicely styled, but porportioned just wrong to be a 4-dr sedan or wagon and they weren’t that well built either. The rest of the Stude lineup in the ’50s was mostly just a hot mess. Possibly the only bright spot in that entire decade was the Lark, which was nicely styled and better proportioned than other Studes of the time. The Larks of ’64-66 were the best of the lot but sadly just came too late to save the company.
Those Packardbakers are just sad looking, so much potential gone to waste. The ’57s were the best of the lot IMO.