A note came from St. Petersburg (the one in Russia, not Florida). This car’s been recently saved from the crusher by its current umm… keeper. He believes it to be a 1951 Studebaker Champion, but… with some unusual modifications. Putting aside the inevitable question (how the hell did it get there ?!), I’d prefer to concentrate on this unauthorized restyling.
As a rule, the results of such exercises vary from ungainly to horribly ugly. But this time ?.. Well, at least in my opinion – this is an exception. It may be not as impressive as what Studebaker did itself, but still.
The front end reminds me of the Glas 2600 GT coupe:
Note the rear license plate slot, which was obviously designed for a pre-1980 “white-on-black” square rear plate – that may give you some idea about the date of this “restyling” (at least, some part of it):
I can’t say where the taillights came from, but if you ask me – they blend in pretty well.
The interior seems to be largely original except for the upholstery, but we don’t see the dashboard. Absolutely love the “suicide” rear doors, despite the name. I almost forgot how massive these 1940s – early 1950s cars looked; even my 1965 Volga has thinner roof pillars.
It seems the fuel tank was moved forward. A safety concern, perhaps ? The transverse reinforcement bar confirms this.
Sadly, there is no engine. Or any traces of it, either. The Volga’s hydrovac brake booster and other parts of the Soviet origin hint, however, that whatever has been here recently – hadn’t been built by Studebaker. Some parts (regulator, valves, pressure gauge) even suggest that the car ran on Liquified Petroleum Gas rather than gasoline most of the time.
By the way, the car is for sale, and for a very modest sum of money at that (around $1000). However, the lack of vehicle title or any other paperwork would be a major obstacle on the way of any brave soul wishing to give it a second life.
So, what do you think, would Raymond Loewy have approved it ?
Related reading: 1951 Studebaker Design Analysis
Absolutely fascinating, and I have got to give the designer credit. He’s got a fair sense of aesthetics. Its an improvement over the bullet nosed Studebakers.
Gah! There’s ugliness by default (no beauty present) and then there’s active ugliness, in which beauty has been assaulted. No offence intended, but this one is the latter.
The body color, neither red nor brown nor orange, paired with the wheel color and plaid interior is very… dissonant. And those bumpers, to say nothing of the overall form. It’s wrong in every way. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a more actively ugly car.
AND it’s inop, so bonus points for being neither beautiful nor functional.
Looks a lot better than this hack job I saw at the Street Rod Nationals in 2005.
Aside from the goofy hood ornament, its not much better/worse than the original single rounds with the gaudy trim it originally had.
Interesting piece and car.
To me, not that familiar with the original, it shows the old issue of how to change a car’s appearance if you can’t change the cabin and glasshouse. Adding a new front and rear can be done, but ultimately the dated original shows through.
Even Pininfarina couldn’t make the Austin 1800 Landcrab elegant, as he couldn’t change the centre section.
Impresive. Looks really well, reminds me of cars like the Falcon in Argentina, living longer lives than originally intended and receiving partial restylings to keep them somewhat up to date.
That was exactly the first comparison I thought of too.
I just logged in to say exactly that!
Much better looking than 99% of the “facelifts” done by car manufacturers in the late 40s-early 50s. I like the way the headlights and tail lights are similarly shaped…and none the worse for it. I can’t seem to envision any color that would better suit this shape, perhaps black or dark grey?
I actually like that quite a bit. The nose styling reminds me of several things but I can’t quite pin down any of them. And the tail styling works really well also. No, they’re not super harmonious with the 50’s center section, but it’s quite different! Also the finishing work looks very professional–no hack job here.
The combo of paint color, wheel color, and upholstery are pretty dissonant though.
The few styling clues left on the hood and rear deck maybe say it’s a 1952. The bulge on the hood and the flat name-badges. A 1952 date would also give the flatter front end-treatment that this car has, over the rounded motif of ’51. It’s interesting that the side view is almost 100% the original car. The only side changes are where they extended the fenders for the new front / rear light treatments. The dash would be the best remaining clue, but we’re without that view.
Actually this appears also have had a power steering set up added (not available ’til the ’54 model year, but a possible bolt-on retro-fit to a ’51 or ’52 chassis, I think. Studebaker used Hydrovac power brakes also, but not ’54 as well. Looks like this has more hoses up there — for AC? Transmission Oil Cooler? Who knows! Thanks for the post!
Not an improvement, nor is it in the Lowey/Exner/Burke school of design. But fun to find.
Well said EdN.
This is some very high quality work. I, too, would love to know the story on how it got to St. Petersburg.
The tail lights? The remind me of a ’71 Ford full-size (Galaxie, Custom, or LTD). Remove the lightbar in the middle and swap sides for installation on a Studebaker. The next question is how a ’71 Ford got close enough to St. Petersburg to be a light donor.
SpB is a maritime city, and seamen brought foreign cars home quite often. Our family friends who lived in Odessa, another Soviet port back then, had a black late 50s Cadillac in the 70s (not much details from my mother it but it definitely had fins; based on her description it most probably was a ’57 or ’58 post sedan).
Taillamps look like 1971 ford custom or ltd
I like it. It does kinda look like a `50s style Russian version of an American car and the rear end looks like a Tucker,but I`m not knocking it. The front and rear clips do work well with this car, and the red plaid upholstery is….errrrr, unique. It would be fun to drive this {if it had a motor] wearing a flannel shirt to match the interior.
The ‘prow’ that is left in the hood has a bit of a Tucker look to it as well.
The first think that came to my mind was Glas as well, for the headlamp/grille in the head-on shot. The side view with the forward lean changes that. It could be a 1960/70’s radical custom with a few more changes and some metalflake paint and chrome!
Yes, both front and back have a Tucker vibe, but there’s more.
I think the Studie body was dropped on a different frame. For one, the ride height looks too high. For another, at a minimum, all four fenders and the rear door skins have been changed.
The original bodies of that generation had a character line and an air vent in the front fenders, and vestigial rear fender outlines in the rear doors and fenders. The outer rear fender skins of that generation bolted on.
Shot of that generation of Studie body in the body plant, showing the bolt on fenders.
I’m thinking that too. The engine compartment doesn’t look very original, and although I can’t find pictures of the Studebaker’s front cross-member and suspension, it somehow doesn’t give off an original vibe.
I can’t find pictures of the Studebaker’s front cross-member and suspension,
I have such pictures. From a 1950 road test. Son of a gun, the suspension and steering are correct.
The Champion had a different steering setup, but this one shows the crossmember under the trans.
Interesting re-style. The overall look is pretty darn good. I’m not a huge fan of square headlights (or just the lenses in this case) especially retrofitted on older cars. The rear end works very well as a jet engine age motif. The trim would have been better off left bright rather than painted however.
Better than an Argentinian Falcon. Great find, Stanislav. There is something quite cohesive about the cosmetic surgery on this.
That’s actually quite tastefully done. The front and rear treatments look like they belong together, and I even like the interior. Just not the wheel colour. And I’m amazed that the builder managed to integrate the rubber bumpers so well.
Overall, not a bad effort at rebuilding a bullet-nose Studebaker, if you can’t get any original parts.
Design and execution so well done that it could have been a prototype. It appears to have a hood latch on the trunk lid – interesting. I think it is a 1952. They completely eliminated the separate rear fenders as well and blended them into the side of the car. Major work to do that, including changes to the rear doors (maybe front doors as well). Rear hinged doors might have been an issue on top on it.
I suspect this car was repatriated from Cuba.
Could these be the headlight rims? 1967 BMW Glas 3000.
Yeah, I suppose the customizer just might have had one of them cluttering up the back lot….
Sure looks like the right parts.
Hmmmmm. The longer I look at this, I wonder if it looks better than the actual 1953 Stude sedan that flopped so badly. Who knows – Studebaker could have been turning these out in Canada to this very day.
There is not a lot that can be done with this body to update it, but this guy did a pretty credible job.
Definitely well done, if I didn’t know any better I could have been convinced this was a second or third world continuation of the Stude body. I actually think it looks downright attractive from the back. If this were mine, rather than restoring it I’d go with the look and throw on some 80s allow wheels and try and adapt a binnacle style dash to really make it authentic!
The colors I don’t have such nice things to say about, who besides Ronald McDonald thinks red and yellow is a good combination?
The car’s colors appear to mimic those of the Soviet flag — dark red with yellow features. The Ronald McDonald association is more fun to think about, though.
That actually looks okay, very good work. Makes me think of something Citroenesque (or would that be Citroeny?)
I have to wonder whether this “modernizirovanniy” Studebaker was intended as some sort of tribute to Studebaker’s WWII role, the Lend-Lease Studebaker US6 2.5 ton truck having served as the backbone of Red Army logistics. The Soviet flag color scheme made that idea occur to me.
The Studebaker brand is well-known in Russia, thanks to the rugged reputation of Studebaker trucks in WWII. Many Russians might never have heard of Buick or Dodge, but Studebaker still rings a bell. So it’s no surprise that if one of these somehow ended up in Russia, it would have been lovingly preserved by someone who really cared about it – in some shape or form.
No foreign car this old could have possibly survived in original condition during Soviet times, without at least mechanical modifications (think Cuba). Replacement parts were not available at all, if something broke or was damaged, you were out of luck. My guess is that this work was done in the aftermath of a wreck. It was simply repaired by someone with a flair for design, escaping the more common butchery.
As far as the wheels go, they probably ended up on this car long after the modifications were done. The hubcaps suggest they are from the GAZ-24 Volga, which was once common enough as a taxi, hence the yellow. The repaint and the upholstery might similarly have been added after this car changed hands. The bodywork, however, shows skill and talent.
Reminds me of a story I once read about someone who imported a GAZ Pobeda (the Volga’s predecessor) to the US in the ’50s as an exhibition piece, albeit one that was driven. Parts availability was a matter of presenting the broken part at the counter, and letting the parts guy determine the nearest domestic component that would work – as of that contemporary (Mechanix Illustrated?) piece, they’d found something that was a perfect fit every time.
The factory owners’ manual, according to Russian speakers it had been given to, purportedly stated that broken or worn parts should be sent back to the factory who would then determine whether to repair or replace. Bureaucratic management of scarce resources at its’ finest, with total disregard of the waste involved in keeping the car off the road for what must’ve been a months-long turnaround!
I have a Loewy Hillman in my carport and a Citroen in the drive this would look right at home, a Turbo diesel implant and it would be a good cruiser a little matt blak and it would look fine.
This is kind of what I imagine Studebaker would have been offering if they had survived into the early 1970s
Yeah… imagine that front and rear on a ’66 body. Works for me.
It kind of reminds me of a Volvo Amazon!
It looks ugly in front. It looks like that of a Ford Pinto. The rear end looks way better.
It’s ugly, but then again, so was the Studebaker.
I like it… Which isn’t the same as saying it all fits. It reminds me of the putty mobiles I used to concoct out of AMT 1/24 Customizing kits in the early ’60s. My poor Mother had to put up with the smell of melted polystyrene when I would stick a knife in a stove burner and use it to slice a T-top.
Still the aesthetic isn’t off kilter if you are accustomed to the Volga.. And the ground clearance would be useful for driving out to your dacha in the country.
😕
The back is just right. Would Brooks Stevens approve? I think so.
The front misses somehow. Would have been better with the longer pre-51 Commander front clip. The short Champion clip doesn’t carry the attempted forward-surge effect.
In any case, there’s an amazing amount of work and talent in those reshaped fenders.
Actually, since the steering linkage identifies it as a Commander, the missing engine probably explains the high ride height in front. If it’s a 51-52, there would have been a 233 in there, which weighed 685lbs. Doesn’t explain the high ride height in back though that’s easily accomplished with leaf springs.
It is kind of cool, and the front definitely says Russian car. But, I was suddenly grabbed by a thought – updated 1948 Tucker!
Tucker front.
Having lived where this typ of save was done routinely , I applaud the obvious hard works and skill used to save this Studie .
I’m flabbergasted that anyone would even consider scrapping it .
The overall style and colors make it look very Soviet to my eyes .
Hopefully someone will save and re power it .
-Nate
Thats the first time I have seen rear mounted “oh shit” bars mounted in a car. Usually the bar is mounted above the glove box on the dash.
I wouldn’t call it a nice car, but it doesn’t look bad.
Upgrading an early ’50s Stude to early ’70s look is not a simple task at all, and the creator of the car above did it surprisingly well!
The headlights and taillights blend to the body in smoothly, and the proportions of the front are just perfect: the lights are exactly where they should be, the grille size and position, the panel under the bumper – no mistake in that.
Hey, the more I see it the more I like it! 🙂
The Happy End: the car’s been bought by a private collection of old US cars (don’t look on the word on the license plate it’s just the name )))
I’ve built three vehicles to date, with one being a modified body style of the original (which is a 1978 Izh 412, with Moskvitch 408 rear wings and converted from a 4 door to a coupé, with longer doors and a chopped top, by about 5cm), so I can appreciate the work that has gone into this car. In my opinion, a good deal of effort has gone into integrating diverse design elements into the original Studebaker, and it is well done. The shutlines are even and of the same size one would expect from a production car of the era. Even the late 1970-s plastic bumpers integrate relatively well, and the colour has the same soviet patina for the era as well (soviet automotive colours were of poor quality and faded quickly), but the colour is unique. Quite frankly, I’d buy and restore this monstrosity, jff.