Designed by Raymond Loewy Associates, the 1953 Studebaker coupe (renamed Hawk in 1956) was a classic design that Studebaker wasted little time in spoiling with an array of aesthetically dubious add-ons. Just as this aging and overdecorated coupe was fading away in the early ’60s, designer Brooks Stevens managed to salvage its reputation with a cheap and hasty but remarkably effective revamp that let the Hawk go out on a high note. Here’s a brief styling history of the 1953 to 1964 Studebaker coupes and their short-lived Bizarro World sibling, the 1958 Packard Hawk.
The 1953 Studebaker coupes were originally designed by Bob Bourke, a manager for Raymond Loewy Associates, the famous design firm Studebaker retained for styling services from 1936 to 1955. Although Bourke’s design was often praised for its European sensibility, Bourke said he also “took much inspiration from the Lockheed Constellation aircraft, whose contours I admired.”
You’ll notice that the right side of the clay model has a different design than the left. The right side was an alternative proposal by Bourke’s assistant, Holden “Bob” Koto, who had previously sketched a concept for a closed grand touring sports car. Combining two different designs onto a single clay model like this was common practice, making it easier for management to decide which they preferred. In this case, Bourke and Koto’s boss, Raymond Loewy, strongly preferred Bourke’s left side design, as did Studebaker management, so Bourke’s version was selected for production.
The “Loewy coupe,” as the car soon became known, had delicate roof pillars and a nose-down stance with slim mustache-like side grilles rather than a traditional front grille.
It also boasted a one-piece wraparound backlight.
The 1953 coupe was available as a six-cylinder Champion or a Commander V-8, in pillared Starlight or pillarless Starliner forms. Both rode the longer 120.5-inch wheelbase of Studebaker’s senior Commander Land Cruiser sedan.
Studebaker called the coupe “the New American car with the European look.” Road & Track thought it looked like a Lancia styled by Pinin Farina.
The 1953 coupe was not an especially well-executed car — it arrived with assembly problems, rust problems, lingering engine problems, and an overly flexible frame — and it didn’t sell nearly as well as Studebaker hoped, but it was a knockout. It’s long been considered one of the finest American automotive designs of the postwar period.
One of the eternal problems of the U.S. auto industry in its heyday was that it could never leave well enough alone. Even classic designs were usually expected to last no more than about three years, and in the ’50s and ’60s, at least some kind of annual facelift was more or less mandatory. Studebaker (which became Studebaker-Packard Corporation on October 1, 1954) didn’t have much cash for that sort of thing, but they felt obliged to always change something to prevent a general panic among dealers and the sales force. Changes for 1954 were minor — it had taken until well into 1953 to get production of the coupes up to speed and sort out some early issues like failing door latches — but this would be the last time the coupes escaped relatively unsullied.
The Studebaker sales organization had been wary of the 1953 “Loewy coupe” because it flew in the face of contemporary U.S. styling trends: It was lean rather than grandiose, subtle rather than bold. The surest way to spot one of these Studebaker coupes was by the styling features it lacked (grille, tail fins, fake scoops), which made some people in South Bend very uneasy. Also, asking ’50s car dealers to sell a car with a relative minimum of bright trim was like telling a small child that their birthday cake couldn’t have any frosting.
The frosting began to be applied in earnest for 1955.
This additional chrome was most lavish on the new President Speedster, a limited-production hardtop with lots of standard equipment to go with its abundant brightwork and often eye-popping two-tone paint schemes.
The Speedster also had a lavish new interior with an engine-turned dashboard and quilted leather-and-vinyl upholstery.
While the 1955 coupe had looked like it had buried its face in the chrome like Winnie the Pooh with a honey jar, it still didn’t really have a grille, which some Studebaker executives considered a serious commercial liability. This was rectified for 1956, when the coupes were renamed “Hawk.” In addition to their new grille, all now had simulated hood scoops and free-standing fender-top turn signal lamps.
In fact, there were actually four Hawks for 1956, beginning with the six-cylinder Flight Hawk, which replaced the previous Champion coupe.
Like all the Studebaker coupes, the Flight Hawk now had a bulged decklid with a ribbed indentation.
In the Commander V-8 series was the pillared Power Hawk, which had the 259-cid V-8.
There was also a hardtop Sky Hawk in the President series, with the 289-cid V-8 and “check mark” side moldings.
In place of the Presidential Speedster, the senior coupe was now the new Golden Hawk hardtop. For this year only, the Golden Hawk was powered by the 352-cid Packard V-8 and Twin Ultramatic transmission. It was distinguished from the Sky Hawk hardtop by ribbed lower body side moldings, an additional chrome strip across the rear fender, and tail fins.
The fins were fiberglass add-ons.
Studebaker and Packard had merged in 1954 with the idea that they could consolidate operations and launch all-new 1957 Studebaker, Clipper, and Packard lines sharing a common inner shell. That didn’t come about due to lack of capital, but even if it had, the Hawk line would have carried over for 1957 with a minor facelift by Studebaker in-house design chief Duncan McRae, featuring taller tail fins and reworked exterior trim.
I’m not sure even Studebaker salespeople had understood the convoluted 1956 Hawk lineup, so the 1957 was simplified to pillared Silver Hawk and hardtop Golden Hawk versions. The Silver Hawk could be had with either six- or eight-cylinder power.
The Golden Hawk traded the discontinued Packard engine for the Studebaker 289 with a McCulloch supercharger, which required a prominent fiberglass hood scoop to clear the carburetor air box. There were also three small bright moldings in each side grille.
On the Golden Hawk, each fin now had five chrome chevrons.
Things were getting desperate at Studebaker-Packard by this time, so there wasn’t much to be done with the Hawks for 1958 except to add a new medallion-type badge to the front grille and mesh inserts in the side grilles.
The ’58 models were also lowered an inch by the substitution of 14-inch wheels for the previous 15-inch ones.
If you compare this 1958 Golden Hawk with the original 1953 Starliner pictured earlier, the ’58 seems distressingly overdecorated. Many of the individual elements would probably have been okay individually, but taken together, they were too much. Admittedly, 1958 was a particularly gaudy year for American car design in general, but it was especially dismaying on the Studebaker coupes because they had originally been so attractive. The effect was like a once gorgeous celebrity left grotesque by too many ill-advised plastic surgeries.
Even the turn signal pods now had fins.
If you thought the Golden Hawk was straining the limits of taste, Studebaker-Packard wasn’t done yet. 1958 also had one final indignity for the dying Packard brand: the 1958 Packard Hawk, which was basically a Golden Hawk with a disturbing new front clip.
Duncan McCrae said this Lovecraftian nightmare was inspired by the Touring-bodied Maserati 3500GT. I think it looked more like a flathead catfish, and would have been best served deep-fried with sides of collard greens and cornbread.
In back, the unfortunate Packard got a Virgil Exner-style toilet seat lid and gold Mylar inserts in the fins, presaging the gold emblem packages offered on the tackier end of ’80s luxury cars.
For 1959, the Packard marque was allowed to rest in peace and the Golden Hawk was dropped, leaving the pillared Silver Hawk in six-cylinder or 259-cid V-8 form.
The turn signal lamps were moved back to the side grilles.
Other than yet another emblem and badging shuffle, there wasn’t much to distinguish the 1959 from the 1958 Silver Hawk. However, if nothing else, the departed Packard coupe had had a desensitizing effect, demonstrating that however overdone the Silver Hawk still looked, it could always be worse.
With Studebaker-Packard having committed its remaining development resources to the compact Lark and the corporate board eager to diversify its way out of the volatile, capital-intensive automobile business, there was no plan for anything but another minor touch-up for the Hawk for 1960. It was now just called Hawk, and was offered only with the 289-cid V-8 except for export markets.
There were some interior trim changes, but the exterior was largely the same except for some shuffling of the emblems and a new set of chrome chevrons behind the rear quarter window.
In back, the Hawk also adopted the chrome taillight surrounds from the departed Packard Hawk.
The 1961 Hawk got a color accent strip on the rear fender instead of the chrome hash marks, but the coupe otherwise looked about the same as it had for the past four years.
The 1961 Hawk had bucket seats and an optional 4-speed manual transmission, but as much as kindly road testers made noises about its appeal to “buyers who want both space and sport,” there was little chance of this now rather elderly bird tempting anyone out of a four-seater Thunderbird, much less a Corvette. Like Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, the aging Hawk invited more pity than scorn, but all but the most indulgent of its audience had moved on.
Most automakers would have given up there, and no one would have blamed them. However, in April 1961, Studebaker-Packard president Sherwood Egbert asked his good friend Brooks Stevens, a design consultant already working on updating the Lark, to come up with a quick proposal for overhauling the Hawk on the cheap. Remarkably, Stevens’ proposal was rushed into production in only four months.
The most impressive aspect of the revamped car, now called Gran Turismo Hawk, was how new it wasn’t. It had a new roof and backlight, but most of the exterior changes were superficial, cunningly arranged to conceal the parts Studebaker-Packard didn’t have the money to change.
At first glance, the GT Hawk now looked like a mashup of the Ford Thunderbird hardtop and the Lincoln Continental, with a neoclassical grille. It was once again a hardtop, an important point now that the base price again topped $3,000.
If you looked more closely, it became apparent that the Hawk wasn’t as new as it looked. For instance, it still had the same old side grilles, now painted over in body color.
The grille was stamped rather than die cast, but despite its new chrome surround, it wasn’t actually that different from the old one.
The rear faux grille hid the same old ribbed decklid stamping, and what looked like new fenders were really just new stainless steel caps on the old ones, which had finally shed their tacked-on fiberglass fins.
Some of these changes actually saved money, like eliminating much of the previous exterior trim and substituting a recessed backlight for the previous wraparound glass.
Nonetheless, the revised trim was generally more tasteful than before, and the GT Hawk now looked more like a ’60s car, which hadn’t really been the case with the 1960–1961 Hawk.
The revamped interior, with its padded dash and three-plane instrument panel, also looked more modern, although the old interior hadn’t been too bad in that respect. Personally, I think the combination of woodgrain trim on the instrument panel and perforated metal elsewhere was a bit strange, but Stevens was proud of the interior, and it was in keeping with the latest buckets-and-console trends.
Since the 1962 Gran Turismo Hawk was done on the cheap, there would be only minor touch-ups for 1963.
The front end got a new grille texture, once again extended to the side grilles, but the side grilles were reshaped, with better integration of the turn signals. Headlight surrounds were now body-color, something Stevens had wanted but been unable to do for 1962 because Studebaker still had a stockpile of the chrome ones.
The rear got a new nameplate at the bottom of the faux-grille, which was reversed from 1962.
Inside, the right side of the dash now had woodgrain trim, although the perforated metal continued on the doors and rear quarter panels.
For 1964, the GT Hawk got yet another revamp of the side grilles.
In back, a new decklid stamping eliminated the ribbed texture, allowing the deletion of the rear grille and substitution of a more conventional nameplate.
Buyers could now specify a vinyl covering for the front half of the roof, using the roof’s “earmuff” molding” as a border, creating a two-tone de Ville effect. This was something else Stevens had proposed at the outset, although it had taken a while to offer it in production.
Inside, the instrument panel surround was now matte black rather than woodgrain.
The “R1” badges indicate that this car has the 240 hp “Jet Thrust” version of the Studebaker 289-cid V-8, which had been massaged by the Granatelli brothers for more power. This had become optional in mid-1963 as part of a Super Hawk package that also included front disc brakes, heavy-duty suspension, and the Twin-Traction limited limited-slip differential. The package could also be ordered with the more powerful R2 supercharged engine, with 290 hp.
The GT Hawk still didn’t sell very well. Its best year was 1962, with 9,335 sales (including exports), but by 1964, production had fallen to just 1,767. Part of the problem was that the Studebaker brand now had negative equity; the company had been on death watch in the press since the mid-’50s, and many buyers knew it. Getting customers to spend this much money on any new Studebaker was a tall order.
Also, while I fear I may antagonize old-time Studebaker fans by saying this, the GT Hawk was essentially the automotive equivalent of a flour sack dress. I don’t say that as a dig: Stevens had done a brilliant job of what we’d now call “upcycling,” and he had a clear idea of how the Hawk needed to be positioned if it was to find a sustainable niche. However, this was still fundamentally a very old car by the end of the line, and there was only so far that could be disguised without starting from a clean sheet of paper.
When Studebaker’s South Bend headquarters shut down in late 1963, Studebaker pulled the plug on the Hawk, and Stevens’ plan for a further facelift with a new hood and grille never materialized.
If the GT Hawk wasn’t a great sales success, Stevens had nonetheless managed to restore the old bird’s dignity, letting it go out on a relative high note. The Gran Turismo Hawk wasn’t quite a silk purse from a sow’s ear, but it was a pretty satisfactory rayon. Given how inexpensively that was accomplished, and considering some of the aesthetic disasters that had come before, that was something close to miraculous.
Appendix: Total 1953–1964 Studebaker Coupe Production
| Year | U.S. | Canada | Export | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1953 | 42,673 | 2,207 | 1,466 | 46,346 |
| 1954 | 15,608 | 1,342 | 1,236 | 18,186 |
| 1955 | 20,813 | 1,386 | 1,035 | 23,234 |
| 1956 | 9,240 | 1,091 | 1,153 | 11,484 |
| 1957 | 16,589 | 1,345 | 1,372 | 19,306 |
| 1958 | 6,779 | 534 | 859 | 8,172 |
| 1959 | 6,649 | 592 | 547 | 7,788 |
| 1960 | 3,719 | 220 | 568 | 4,507 |
| 1961 | 3,117 | 223 | 89 | 3,929 |
| 1962 | 7,842 | 546 | 947 | 9,335 |
| 1963 | 3,649 | 360 | 625 | 4,634 |
| 1964 | 1,484 | 0 | 283 | 1,767 |
| TOTAL | 138,162 | 9,846 | 10,180 | 158,688 |
The 1958 total doesn’t include production of the Packard Hawk, which totaled 588 cars, or other Studebaker hardtops not derived from the 1953 “Loewy coupe.”
Related Reading
Curbside Classic: 1953 – 1954 Studebaker Commander Starliner Coupe – Star Light, Star Bright (by Paul N)
Car Show Classic: 1955 Studebaker Speedster – A Star (Luxury) Liner (by William Stopford)
Curbside Classic: 1956 Studebaker Golden Hawk–Twilight Pink (by Stephen Pellegrino)
Found: Two Supercharged Rarities – 1958 Packard Hawk And 1957 Studebaker Golden Hawk (by Paul N)
1961 Studebaker Hawk (Supercharged) – The Most Unusual And Eccentric American Car Of 1961 (by Paul N)
1962 Studebaker Gran Turismo Hawk – Irrational Exuberance (by J P Cavanaugh)
Curbside Classic: 1962 Studebaker Gran Turismo Hawk – A Beautiful Death (by Paul N)
The recessive gene would eventually show up again in the mid-seventies Camaro, especially the 1975 with the wrap around backlight.
I built a 1/25 kit of a dragster version and was extremely taken by the beauty of the original shape.
America’s Aurelia Spyder.
That annual model change really was a sickness.
Engine problems?Studebaker engines were as good as any. And the author makes the common mistake of overly criticizing fifties style buy looking at it through a modern lense.Odd overdone even gaudy. But compared to its contemporaries?Not so bad.
The early Studebaker V-8 suffered serious camshaft problems that cost Studebaker millions of dollars in warranty costs. These were largely addressed in the first two years, but they lingered into 1953. Bob Bourke said:
Exactly!! At 12/13 y/o in 1962/3 I was just beginning to notice cars. I still remember the house where a new ’62 Hawk showed up in the driveway and that I was happy to see that the Hawks had finally shed those awful fins and picked up a roof with distinction in the process. I think the ’62 front is best, but if I had one I’d put a ’64 decklid on it.
With the ’58 Packard Hawks, I don’t mind the front so much. Without the fins and with either miniaturized ’55/6 senior Packard taillights or perhaps miniaturized ’56 Clipper taillights, or something like the ones on the ’62 Hawk I think it could have staked a better claim as a Packard.
The colors! Some great bright colors both on the outside and inside. Can you imagine a car from the last few decades with a bright yellow interior? I can’t say I’d buy the yellow but that red interior yes, yes, yes. I’d take that over the black, grey and tans we currently have to choose from.
It is surprising how well they managed to make it look like it belonged in the 60’s with mainly just the change in the roofline and the elimination of the tacked on fins.
I was wondering when we would get to the “IH” wheel covers. Those seen on the 64 GT were modified by the mfg to remove the stylized “S” and became the deluxe wheel cover for IH’s with 15″ wheels. Later the ribs around the face were removed and it soldiered on for a few more years. IH finally ponied up the cash for a clean sheet design instead something came from reworked tooling that otherwise would have likely been discarded.
Loewy and Bourke have always gotten the credit for the 53 coupe, but I wonder if their work was influenced by this drawing by Virgil Exner before he left Studebaker’s in-house design department in 1950.
Really, even the 57-58 Golden Hawks were fairly restrained for the era. But I think the 56 Sky and Golden Hawks were the best looking of the finned years. And I also love the 61 for its buckets/4-speed option. I find something to love about all of them, with 55 and 59 being my last choices.
FWIW, Loewy considered the Stevens design a hack job on the original. However, perhaps that could also be credited to ego or a professional rivalry.
In the book “Virgil Exner Visioneer”, that drawing is said to be from 1948, Exner’s proposal for a new 1950 MY Studebaker. Richard Langworth does not mention this drawing in his Studebaker book, but does say that there had been various drawings of very sporty designs since even before the end of the war, so this was apparently one of several that obviously influenced the final design.
I think Loewy had a point insofar as the GT Hawk was (unavoidably) somewhat contrived, trying desperately to bend the original design in a number of directions it hadn’t really been intended to go. On the other hand, Studebaker had been doing that for years before Stevens got involved, and Stevens’ take on it at least had the virtue of having a coherent theme, rather than just an agglomeration of pieces the sales department thought were hot or umpteenth trim shuffles because there was no money for tooling. I have mixed feelings about the Stevens version as a standalone design (which of course it’s really not), but as a piece of tailoring, it’s pretty impressive.
That’s my takeaway as well, the most impressive part is if you take away the roof all they really did was tone it way down to 1956 Flight Hawk spec and paint the side grilles, yet it manages to look like a different car.
Ironically I’m less keen on the GT Hawks 63-64 updates, save for the trunklid maybe, it was starting to fall into the same trap of fussy details, it just never made it to a point it was nearly ruined by them.
My wife has alway love these mid 50 Studebakers. She saw one at the first car show she attend that I judged at in Big Sky Montana. later that year we went to Palm Springs and she loved the Avovni.
Although the original is naturally my favorite, I can sort of warm up to the ’58 Golden Hawk in profile and the right colors, like the one you showed.
I never quite got all the little year-by-year changes to the GT until now. It was a nice bit of heroic effort by Stevens, but yes, the Hawk’s proportions and other elements were hopefully out of date. It might have worked in Europe, like a Bristol, which had somewhat similar narrow and long front-end proportions, but in the US in the go-go sixties, it was not going to fly.
As much as I admire the original coupe, I did think it had too long of a wheelbase.Back in 2012 in my CC on the Straliner coupe, CC commenter George Denzinger tweaked the wheelbase a bit and the result is much better, in my opinion. Unfortunately the car had rear fender spats, but the proportions are improved.
I agree about the wheelbase, which was something that still was a bit of an issue with the GT Hawk: It was trying to look like a Thunderbird, but the Thunderbird had a significantly shorter wheelbase.
The wheelbase looks exotic to me. The Chevy Corvair coupe has similar look.
+1 on that wheelbase length.
Thank you for bringing this summary to us. To me the design came full circle as the original and the last gen looked very clean and sharp. I had contact with several over the years. We had a 63 black Golden Hawk in the junk yard I worked at in 1982. Rust had taken hold so bad it dissolved the cowl. Bertha hoisted her remains on to the flatbed for transport to the crusher. Sad. That same summer someone in town had a pink flesh tone 58 Packard Hawk. The fiberglass nose had a few cracks but it was in otherwise good shape. Still fugly, more so in that color. My most recent encounter was two years ago at small show in NY. Gentleman and his wife drove up in a stunning deep blue 63. Photos don’t do this car justice. Interior was so inviting and the whole package has flair.
You wrote “However, this was still fundamentally a very old car by the end of the line, and there was only so far that could be disguised without starting from a clean sheet of paper.”
I can confirm the truth in that. My father’s first car was a 1950 Studebaker. He had been born and raised in New York City where nobody in his family had cars or driver licenses. On his own, away from that city, he discovered that he needed a car. He looked at many, but only the Studebaker salesman made him the right offer: driving lessons and take him to the DMV to get a license with the purchase of a Studebaker car.
In 1952 he traded that under-powered and under-braked example for one with the new V8 and better brakes. He remained friends with that salesman for the rest of the salesman’s life. He dated my future mother in that 1950, married, bought a house, had a child (me) and drove that second Studebaker until 1962.
For the 1960 year I started kindergarten which meant our family needed two cars. My mother wanted a compact in the worst way. But instead of buying a Lark for her, he bought a 1960 Edsel–the total opposite of a compact– on the day the Edsel marque had been discontinued.
Decades later I asked him why he never even considered the Lark. His answer was that he didn’t want another copy of the car he already had. He elaborated that Studebaker didn’t have the money to update their cars. Their 1960 models were essentially warmed over 1947 cars. He wanted a NEW car.
That a guy who had no real interest in cars (beyond using them to get from point A to point B reliably) knew how antiquated Studebaker offerings were under their sheet metal, way back in the fall of 1959, is proof that the public image of Studebaker during their end years, was exactly as you wrote.
It looks like the Exner design is on the short wheelbase also. I don’t know about the fins on the first facelift, they seem tasteful and the mylar looks good with earth tones. However the deer repellent turn signals could go. Replace them with three inchj or so European style fog lamps that double as turn signals.
The ’53/54 will always be an unapproachable timeless icon. Never had seem Exner’s drawing, clearly it had influence. Stevens was extremely talented, an amazing result given what constraints he had. I always thought of the GT as sort of an American Facel-Vega.
According to an earlier article here on on CC there was a brief effort to import and sell a rebadged and restyled version of the Facel-Vega Excellence (equipped with a Packard V-8 engine) as the new Packard. It was an outlandish idea that went nowhere. Moreover, Studebaker was distributing Mercedes-Benz models in the U.S. at the time and the idea made the boys from Stuttgart unhappy.
Here’s a link to the article: https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-european/curbside-classique-1958-1961-facel-vega-excellence/
Thanks for this thoughtful article Aaron. Any thought says to why Studebaker chose to abandon the hardtop from 1959-61? It seems at odds with the prevailing trends of the time.
I have to admit the only ones I don’t like are the 55s dipped in chrome and the packardbaker. The original clean design certainly got muddied by updates but I’m not as smitten by it as most, and frankly I think the grille gives it more character. I think the 56 Golden Hawk with its low fins is my personal favorite of the bunch.
The Gran Turismo is borderline stunning at certain angles but others not so much. The Thunderbird roof has a sharpness to it that rounded edges of the lower body clashes with. In profile its proportions can look kinda weird too, which never really bothered me with the original roofline(it always had odd proportions but it wore them well).
I too am curious as to why Studebaker dumped the hardtop. Do the rear windows roll down on the pillared coupes or they fixed panes? I could see saving some manufacturing cost there but if not there couldn’t have been that much savings, and losing such a fashionable roof style seems like a liability. Or was it dropped for structural reasons?
I’ve never seen a definite answer on dropping the hardtop, but I suspect it was for structural reasons: The long wheelbase frame was really not stiff enough and flexed in the middle, which was more pronounced with the hardtop. Bob Bourke said it was improved after the first year or so, but not enough. I would guess that they decided that the pillared coupe roof presented fewer problems without further investments in dealing with the underlying structural issue.
Like I said in the text, I think most of the individual styling elements of the later ’50s cars were at least defensible, but all together, they were overkill. When I was putting together the photos, I looked at that shot of the 1958 Golden Hawk and paused to mutter “Oh, come ON” because it was just such overkill. The grille was one thing, but continuing the texture on the side grilles; and adding the giant grille medallion; and putting fins on the little chrome fruit fly/UFO taillight pods; and adding the tacked-on hood bulge that still looked like an afterthought; and giving it (nonfunctional) slats; and pushing the tacked-on fins into Batmobile territory — it was all much too J.C. Whitney.
“Too much J.C. Whitney” says it all. But I can’t blame Studebaker too much for that. They were really in a dilemma in having to make annual changes to keep up with the Big 3 (and even Rambler), but having virtually no money to do them. So it ended up being all these cheap, tacked-on doo-dads which did sales no favors, with one of the worst being the quad headlamp ‘pods’ for 1958.
Ironically, along with the influx of Packard money, the car that helped keep Studebaker going in those final, desperate years was the bargain-basement 1957-58 Scotsman, the surprise success of which led directly to the Lark. But after the Big 3 got into the compact game, it was essentially all over for the Terror from South Bend.
Don’t get me wrong I agree, for me of the 56-61 series the 59-60 silver hawks/hawks are less offensive since the trim doodads are toned way way down from the 58 Golden Hawk, and the 56 line looks pretty clean, the flight hawk is about as close to the original Loewy you could get with the upright grille. The 56 Golden Hawk is of course trimmed to the gills and sprouted fins, but I think the fins it used are much more tasteful, the way the 57-61 ones get taller towards the rear and fan out is what gives them Batmobile vibes and I think the trim on the 56s does a much nicer job of hiding the seams.
In 1959, Studebaker actually wanted to drop the Hawk line altogether and concentrate all their efforts on the Lark only. It was dealer insistence that brought about just a single Hawk body style in only trim level for 1959. To the dealers, the Silver Hawk was at a consistent seller, and in late 1958, the ’59 Lark’s sales success was not yet proven and they wanted at least on familiar model remain in the line-up besides trucks.
It is interesting how after the 1955 model year the coupes split off from the rest of the Studebaker line and became their own uniquely styled Hawk series, separate from the President, Commander and Champion. You do think to yourself, if only Studebaker had to foresight to design their V-8 in a way that they could have added more displacement to it down the road. If only they had redesigned their 1953 chassis with a wider track. If only they had anticipated more demand for the long-wheelbase models, or had been more flexible in adjusting their production to meet that demand.
The Hawk GT didn’t quite match the stunning design of the 1953-54 coupes, but it was striking and a vast improvement over the 1955 coupe and the Hawks of 1956-1961. In addition to T-Bird and Lincoln Continental styling influences, I see a bit of Continental Mark II. I’ve often read that the front end styling of the Hawk GT, and even the Lark, was influenced by the Mercedes-Benz radiator-style grills (as Studebaker had been distributing Mercedes-Benz and DKW starting in 1957).
It was too bad that it just couldn’t quite compete with the T-Bird or the Riviera. By 1963 Studebaker’s own Avanti (itself no great sales success) probably cannibalized some of its sales.
This was a fun piece to read and, I hope, you had a good time writing time it, Aaron. Your use of language and your similes make me smile to myself. You’re like a throwback to the best automotive journalists and writers of the ’70s and ’80s.
Thanks, I appreciate the kind words!
When they split off the Hawk as a separate line for 1956, S-P was still really hoping that the 1957 sedans would be all-new, with their new shared platform strategy allowing them to offer Studebaker, Clipper, and Packard models based on the same body shell with different exterior pieces. The coupes were not part of that 1957 plan, so I think the move to identify them as a separate model line was probably to help justify keeping them around until they could be more extensively redesigned, which would have been harder if the coupes were still identified as Champions and Commanders.
If S-P had anticipated that the sedans were going to be around in some form into the ’60s, they might have done some things differently, but they had really expected that there was going to be a complete redesign for 1957 that would let them achieve the economies of scale that were the ostensible goal of the Studebaker-Packard merger. (I don’t think they ever had a very realistic idea of how that consolidation was actually going to work in a practical production sense, but that was the plan.)
Re the question about why no hardtop in the ’59 – ’61 Hawks – two words: Harold Churchill.
With the introduction of the Lark, he wanted to simplify production and focus solely on the Lark. Building the Hawk meant building a second and almost totally different car (despite shared components in the powertrain and suspension). The dealers howled and Churchill relented and gave them the stripped down ’59 Hawk. They built the coupe rather than the hardtop because it was less expensive to build, never mind that it was right at the peak of the hardtop craze. The dealers howled more, so the ’60 got the 289 V-8 rather than the 259 and with more dealer complaints, the ’61 got a re-trimmed interior, bucket seats and an optional 4 speed, floor mounted stick shift.
In a similar vein, Studebaker probably should have continued with a President. Their President customers were only about 10% of their business but they were very loyal to Studebaker and Churchill left them nowhere to go except out the door. The President shared the chassis of the Hawk, so they could have built Hawks and Presidents together in batches of accumulated orders. The lack of a President in the line was rectified somewhat with the introduction of the Cruiser in 1961.
The ’55 Speedster’s already ugly front end is made worse by the extra bumper guards and whatever those pods are. The ’53 Hardtop and Coupe look performance oriented, but the rather anemic 232/120 HP V-8 , while competitive with contemporary Fords and Chevys, didn’t add to any mystique. Was Bill Frick the guy who built “Studillacs”-the repowered Stude with the Cadillac V-8? Performance to match the looks.
Dear god! I feel like I’ve just awakened with a feverish tongue and a fluff on the lung after a nightmare set amongst some increasingly more made-up, ever-older women at Mar a Lago.
Great article, Aaron. I’m sure I had no idea there were so many variations upon that nice, but not quite superb, original.
Even with all the design changes, they remained one of the best designs to come out of the 1950s and early 1960’s. Mu father had a GT Hawk before I was born that he still raved about. What amazing is how few of these Srudwbaler actually sold less than 10,000 a year from 1958 onwards, and never more than 50,000 a year. Its amazing how many are still around, even though apparrently they had major rust issues in the body below the door.
I have heard that the Packard Hawk’s rather unfortunate styling was inspired by Roy T. Hurley, aviation pioneer, Curtiss-Wright chairman, and appointed Studebaker-Packard savior. The Packard Hawk was supposed to evoke the style of early aircraft, particularly the outside armrests that were intended to mimic the cockpits of First World War biplanes. Maybe…
In any event, I always liked what Brooks Stevens did with the car. The GT Hawk had to be the most successful low-budget restyle of all time, even if it didn’t increase sale appreciably.
Duncan McRae said that the Packard Hawk was suggested by Roy Hurley, who was keen on the Maserati 3500GT, and that McRae and his team had assumed that the Packard version was a one-off specifically for Hurley rather than something they were really going to offer for general sale. If it had just been Hurley’s personal car, it would be easily filed under “no accounting for taste,” but what a sour closing note for Packard.
Interesting, thanks for the confirmation. A sour note indeed!
The ’58 Packard-Hawk nose has always reminded me of a fish…the Bullhead. Just add a couple of whiskers.
For more on his career look for “Streamliner: Raymond Loewy and Image-making in the Age of American Industrial Design” by John Wall.