On our last visit to an alternate universe where Packard and Studebaker survived into the 1970’s, we looked at AI-generated Packard Patricians. They looked appropriate for the era, but most of them didn’t exactly scream “Packard.” Will the AI do any better at the other end of the spectrum?
The results are mixed, but at least more interesting at times. As with the Patrician, it gets the general idea right: Lark = small car. At the very least, the smaller width of the car seems to have resolved the “too many headlights” issue (though we still have a few too many turn signals and reflectors).
Overall, these first examples don’t seem particularly “Studebaker.” To me they look a bit like Hondas, or some kind of Austin. Maybe the AI is trying to tell us that Studebaker would be selling captive imports?
This is where my own notions of what Studebaker would be doing in 1975 come into play. I thought it would be likely that there would be a hatchback Lark variant, but no matter how hard I tried the the AI saw the word “Lark” and put a trunk on it. In retrospect I should have asked for a Wagonaire to at least get a wagon. Instead, I cheated a bit and asked for a “Studebaker Larkette hatchabck.” Freed of the Lark constraint, the AI gave me an awkward, rectilinear Gremlinesque thing with blue tires.
This one came out a bit smoother, albeit with some of the window weirdness I’ve come to expect from the AI.
In some cases the car was closer to a size I’d associate with a Lark (more compact than subcompact). This one reminds me of a Valiant or Dart of you ignore the oversized wheels.
This one reminds me a lot of an AMC Hornet, which would be an appropriate competitor.
There is no accounting for taste in AI-generated two-tone paint jobs. Despite the window issues, the grille on this one at least has some personality.
Moving on to the “journalism style” images, we’ve got a few more Austin/Honda-inspired Larks. Maybe it’s the style of the image, but these come off as larger cars than the ones at the top of this post.
That grille is a little fussy.
This one would fool me, but I don’t think there’s a driver…?
Needs more indicators and reflectors. We’ve got what I could imagine is a Lark grille, but the sides are very reminiscent of a Mercedes or some British cars.
Another “Larkette” hatchback, this one looking like an oversized Ford Pinto.
A four-door variant with a bit of GM flavor to the front end.
I find “concept sketch” style Larks a little less generic. This one has a bit of Vega flavor to it, but I like the grille. It almost looks like Buick got their own version of the Vega instead of the Opel.
This is fun and unique. It looks like a concept sketch for the Gremliesque Lark we saw earlier. Concept versus production reality?
The greenhouse is very light and airy on this one. The grille is cool and unique. Technically, those headlight pods are geometrically reversed, with the passenger-side one being my preference.
This looks lie a more production-ready version of the previous Lark.
The “mixed-media” style Larks mostly looked like compacts. The profile is a bit Ford-derivative, but I like the front end.
Usually this style of picture cuts back on or conceals the gingerbread, but those vents on the C-pillar are a bit much.
This looks almost mid- or full-sized. We’re getting into Commander/Champion territory here.
Not bad.
Unlike the AI images of the Patrician, the Larks weren’t as consistent about putting 5-mph bumpers on these.
This looks like a 1960’s car with a 5-mph bumper tacked on.
You could convince me that this is ab actual car. Maybe more 1965 than 1975.
When I first started playing with the “concept sketch” style I was asking for 1985 Larks, so here are a few.
They came out kind of cartoony compared to the other sketches. This one has a real Chrysler vibe.
It could be anybody’s subcompact, but I think that could be said of a lot of 1980’s designs.
“Aerodynamics are in. Let’s give it a softer grille. But keep the vinyl roof.”
Overall, I can imagine these as Studebakers. Historically, there isn’t a single visual marker that screams “Studebaker” from generation to generation in the postwar period. Who’s to say what direction Studebaker styling would have gone if they were able to invest in new designs? And even I can’t imagine some of them as Studebakers, I think a lot of these designs look correct for the era and could fool someone without the encyclopedic knowledge of the typical CC denizen.
Next time: When is an Avanti not an Avanti?
Very interesting work from “Al.” Had I been the mogul of the corporation, I would have sent the body panel molds to Brazil.
I especially like the first example, which reminds me of the larger early Datsun and Toyota efforts. One might imagine a scenario where Studebaker/Packard survived and AMC did not, with Studebaker maybe subsisting on a diet of Hawks, Larks, and Avantis, with the Clipper filling the mid-range and the Packard taking the top. In that case, it might be that the Lark would try to produce something along the lines of a Toyota Corona or even a Datsun 510 – they already were building their cars narrower than anyone else, so maybe they would have been more equipped to downsize quicker.
To my eye, the first two look a lot like the front of a late 70’s Toyota Cressida…somehow seems about right. Now that the Avalon is gone, maybe even more fitting (though the latest Avalon looked nothing like the ’76 Cressida to me.)
The size of the Lark seems to be a common one…never compared the dimensions but seems like maybe it and a Rambler classic would be about same relative size, and maybe even the Cressida and the Nissan Maxima/ Datsun 810? Now that sedans seem to be going away, probably not so much now?
Great work! These would have sold like crazy in 1975 and in 2023 you might spot one and say WHOA! When was the last time you saw one of those? (They’d also be very rusty)
A whiff of first gen Cressida in the first shots
Wow, in general these actually came out better than last week’s Patrician. Maybe the AI was better trained with Lark images than Patrician images.
Curious to see what it would do when asked for an updated Avanti.
The Avanti itself is so different that it kind of looks like it IS one of these results but 60 years ago…Keep feeding in enough punchcards to that building sized laptop and eventually it spits that out. It would explain a few AMC designs as well…
The “mixed-Lark” coupe look a bit like the 1970s HQ or HJ Holden Monaro coupe from the side.
Speaking of “what if?”, it could be interesting to see how Edsel, DeSoto, Hudson, Nash, Kaiser-Frazer would have look in the 1960s-70s-80s or if Renault in Argentina had kept the IKA Torino well into the 1990s.
The example with the blue/orange paint job would have been a huge seller. I like the grill with the quad headlights.
We all know a 1975 Lark would have been yet another desperate makeover of the 1953 bodies… 🙂
Many of the first batch here look a bit Mustang II to my eyes, especially up front. It could also be a Datsun or Mazda. It certainly looks 1975, especially in orange. The second concept sketch nicely brings the 1964 face into the ’70s.
Uuuuh… The Lark wasn’t released until 1959.
None of these drawings would have gotten past the Board of directors back in the day.
True, but the Lark was heavily based on the 1953 sedan body and platform, basically chopping off large chunks of front and rear overhang and shortening the wheelbase by a few inches. The greenhouse of the 1958 (nearly) full-size sedans/wagons and 1959 Larks are nearly identical.
Humans tend to go retro when we move a period design into a new era, but AI clearly doesn’t, and that’s refreshing. However, it seems to give ’70s “Larks” skinnier tires than I would expect. If Studebaker had made it that far, would they still be totally independent, or might they have merged with AMC? In that case, badge engineering might be interesting to see. If you think about it, Studebaker treated its cars that way for over a decade, based on the the 1953 Loewy design– “badge engineering” all hawks, sedans and Larks for 11 years.
Had Studebaker still been around in 1975 I think that the newly introduced Ford Granada and Mercury Monarch would have eaten Studebaker’s lunch.
The third picture from the bottom (the one with the Chrysler vibe) so fits with the eighties mindset of “all business in the front, party in the back”.
It looks like a formal “K” car in the front for sure, but the back screams Fox-body Mustang hatchback to me.
After seeing the “Avanti by the Pool” in Tom’s post the other day, I’m really looking forward to see what AI comes up for that special Stude.
The first one is a Morris Marina. Ughhh.
Would the Brook Stevens Sceptre not be a better baseline? SP couldn’t and didn’t survive on metoo products. They needed something different.
Unfortunately, the AI is something of a generalist. It understands a bit about Studebaker, a bit about the Lark, and nothing of the Sceptre. If I ask for a 1975 Studebaker Sceptre, I get this.
If I add “as designed by Brooks Stevens” I get so
Thing more recognizable as a Studebaker, but with no relation to the Sceptre.
It didn’t add the attachment to the first reply. Here you go.
I take your point! My eyes…
the smaller cars would have followed the below which was a prototype sub-compact Studebaker, sadly never to enter production.
Not too hard to imagine that, facelifted through the 1970s into the 1980s and ending up with big, black plastic grille and bumpers, flush door handles, new lights, etc. Maybe even some new panels front and rear at one stage.
This may work for an AMC Hornet, but that’s it.
The front end styling looks very 70s AMC while the greenhouses are all over the place. The orange 4 door at the beginning looks like an alternate universe Toyota and some of the doors have a Mustang II vibe. Oddly the 4th from last B&W study looks like the rear 3/4 of a Fiat 124 Coupe. I also see some Chevy Monte Carlo in the blue and purple cars.
I get the impression the AI is doing a mashup of cars from the set time period and not from a specific corporate design language.
If anything I would expect Studebaker to pursue something that looks more like the Avanti since it was Studebaker’s most modern design in the 60s. Along that line I’d expect a 75 Studebaker Lark to look like a cross between a late 60s Valiant and an Avanti.
I like the first of the “journalism style” images. There’s something vaguely Volvo to me about that biggish yellow car. Maybe it’s that grill ornament that looks like it was plucked off of a 70’s 164 and stuck in the middle of the grill. Unless that’s some sort of speaker for something. Perhaps something necessary on whatever planet the car is registered on…where it seems ok to park your car in the road facing the wrong way on a one-way street.
I was playing with the Open AI DallE-2 entity and I plugged in a few prompts.
First, “A 2023 Studebaker Champion in lime green in the style of a midcentury modern magazine advertisement”
Nothing 2023 about this. A little BMW Mini? and the whitewalls. the whitewalls.
Shaabzader Deere is outside of Dearborn, right?
Just say NO to drugs.
And Curpedader Studebaker-Mercedes Benz is near Cedar Rapids, I think.
the whitewalls
@ davidjoseph, unga bunga….SIMBA!
Then, “A 2015 Nash Gremlin in lime green in the style of a midcentury modern magazine advertisement”
Gashihier Nash/AMC/Renault – the vanity dealership owned by the German Turkish league soccer star Ermal Gashi outside of Wiesbaden.
Like the last Thunderbird.
That one is pretty cool, actually.
When I finish with the Studebakers and Packards, I plan to do a “blooper reel” post of my early failures at generating cars, or things I kept because they were so weird.
For example, this is how the AI conceived of a 2022 Corvair.
I like that “Corvair.” It suggests an alternate universe where there never was a Camaro, but the Corvair eventually moved to a front-engine design.
That’s one of the few I’ve seen with a proper logo.
It looks great actually! But I’m not seeing the 2022 in it at all. Does the AI have trouble extrapolating farther out? Albeit the results are no less interesting.
Actually come to think of it, I’ve never played around with AI art. How does this all work? Do you just type in 1975 Studebaker Lark (or Larkette hatchback) & see what it comes up with? Presumably the more information you enter (hatchback, color, etc.) you come closer to what you envision.
But to do all that the AI has to really integrate a lot of information & from what I’ve seen so far, do it incredibly well!
1. It has to study the Studebaker lark in the context of its time to understand it’s a more modest compact rather than last post’s luxury car. It seems to be less able to integrate brand specific styling cues but that would be at least part.
2. It has to study a range of 1975 cars to pick up on a variety of styling cues used in the era across all makes & models.
3. It has to integrate both of those into something that so looks like a car (3 headlights per side notwithstanding) as to make a believable picture. & from what I’ve seen I’m pretty impressed!
Strangely enough, I really like this one!
Just before opening this post I was looking at some of Bob Marcks’s proposals for the ’67 and ’68 Lark, which never got built. The first few of these pix strictly carry on from Marcks’s ideas, including the kickup on the side. The last dozen seem to be more like a mix of Mustang II and K-car.
Love it! I’m pretty blown away by these and the others we’ve seen here. Who could have anticipated this then years ago?
OK – I’ll play too
Studebaker gets absorbed by Mercedes, so eventually a “#12” design, as shown above, using a standard E class body, would eventually happen. But with a better, less busy, front end. Dual headlight, not single, with a modernized version of the 1963 Studebaker grille.
The others? Nah. Studebaker was too weak to dictate design to Mercedes. If we look at how AMC effected the Renault design which ended up as the Alliance, we see that a majority of the vehicle retains its owner’s DNA. The best the subservient company could do is put a front end cap on the dominant company’s offerings.
Another ‘BUMPER’ car from that era! A PRIME example of what happens when the govt. gets involved with ‘business’.
Did Nissan/Datsun have an early version of this software in the 1970s? It would explain some of their styling.
I also see the Nissan vibe, and ironically – according to Hemmings and other sources – at some point in the mid-‘60s, Studebaker Canada’s president, Gordon Grundy, was in negotiations to sell rebadged Nissan cars in North America as Studebakers.
Grundy was instructed by South Bend to end negotiations with Nissan, and instead approach Toyota. Toyota wouldn’t talk to Grundy because they weren’t approached first. Then, when Grundy went back to Nissan, they refused to resume negotiations.
Supposedly Richard Nixon was legal counsel for Studebaker at the time, and recommended dropping Nissan in favor of Toyota. But I’ve never seen any solid evidence to support this connection to the future President.
I see Dodge Aspen, Opel Rekord and even Ford Pinto influences here, altogether a hodgepodge of ugliness. It really is too bad that Studebaker and Packard didn’t merge with Nash and Hudson as once planned. They would probably still be here today if that had happened.
I agree with another commenter here, that the 4 way merger would have turned out less like General Motors and more like British Leyland. Four lines of cars, three of which more or less compete for the same buyers, based in three states, having almost no parts in common, and a major ego clash amongst high-level execs.
I agree with you. That fantasy merger had almost no chance of success.
If the independent 4 had consolidated, it still would have resembled something like AMC. A strong leader like Romney would be necessary to get all singing off the same song sheet to survive the 60’s & 70’s.
And just like AMC, a Euro automaker would have come calling in the 80’s looking for a beachhead in North America. The French were too weird, the British too broke, and Swedes too small. Maybe Fiat, but we saw what happen with Fiat Chrysler. As for the Germans, we saw what happened with DaimlerChrysler. Asia was too self focused to get directly entangled in Detroit. Maybe a joint venture like NUMMI or AutoAlliance, but no more.
Eventually, a dance partner would have come calling to jointly develop EVs due to the enormous capital expense. Jeep would emerge as the cash cow to finance this transition just like GM and Ford use SUVs and pick-up to finance their programs.
Lots of parallels here.
The first thing I’d photoshop out of the AI-generated images is the extra blinkers. The one at the top, in particular, would look much more “domestic” without the ones in the bumper since FMVSS 108 allows combination turn signal/parking lights inboard of the headlights while Japanese vehicle codes do not.
These designs have a very Japanese air about them but truth is weirder than fiction – Studebaker did work on a small car prototype before it ceased production and its styling to me is in the early 60s Italo-Japanese idiom, so that the same styling development might have taken at our parallel world Studebaker. The big cars though would have had to be Sceptre oriented so maybe like GM’s Colonnade…
Yes, even a bit like a UK Ford Zephyr Mk.3 (allegedly Frua influenced) with a Lark grille.
This looks so much like the smaller Lancia of the time (Fulvia?).
Of course under the skin the Lancia would be much more sophisticated.
I see some Holden in the first black and white images. Side note: pictures started showing up twice in every article on any android browser I’ve tried? Anyone else seeing this on a smartphone?
The first two illustrations remind me of a Toyota Cressida.
Some of the other illustrations remind me of Mustang II and the Fox platform as well.
Say what you will about AI styling, but , these cars are butt ugly!! Studebaker NEVER would put out crap like this !
Go home AI! You’re drunk!!
I’m not seeing anything that says “Studebaker” at all, with the sole exception being the Shaabzader Deere that @davidjoseph1 posted in the comments section. It has a mishmash of 1962-63 Lark wheel openings, 1959-63 Lark aft of the wheel wells, 1959-62 windshield, and 1964-66 side glass in back. Also picking up the rough shape of a 1953-54 from just under the headlight to the bumper. But it was asked to produce a 2023 Champion.
It’s funny that it struggles with some of the basics that are quite similar on all cars, like wipers and lighting… Its tendency to keep rendering lights, more lights, artifacts and reflections of lights, very odd patterns and shapes into melty looking grilles, then throw in a few totally random warts, goiters, and zits- so bizarre! Also interesting are the Thalidomide mirrors, Eastern Bloc-ish wheels with soft serve center caps, and the fourth-from-last car that has the rear window defroster grid in the side windows and in front of driver.
Be interesting to know exactly what was fed into the machine that it’s drawing from, eh.
I don’t exactly know why it does what it does. My best understanding is that it has a knowledge base but it isn’t doing a Google search every time you ask for an image. Today I was playing around and asked for and image of a ’65 Mustang, I got some very good likenesses. But when I asked for a ’75 Mustang II they looked more like ’71 models. And it got worse the further I went.
In a way, the AI is a generalist. Like my wife, it can sketch a reasonable facsimile of a ’65 Mustang, but anything else is just a guess.
Your conception/visualization of a 70s Stude was superbly executed–especially as the models give the impression (as did most industry makes of the 70s) that trim pieces and other parts would fall within six months or so.