This 1961 Studebaker Hawk is a rolling farrago of contradictions: awesome yet pathetic; innovative yet obsolete; bold yet old; unusual yet all-too familiar; fast yet not competitive; exciting yet sad. I could go on, but let’s just say this is the most unusual and eccentric American car of 1961, and by a healthy margin. That alone makes it very compelling, if unusual and eccentric is your automotive thing. It is mine.
The fact that this one has a supercharger makes it even that much more compelling.
The Hawk of course is a direct descendant of the breathtaking 1953 Studebaker “Loewy” coupe, a bold pioneer ahead of its time in stylistic terms, but one that struggled with production issues, setting back Studebaker financially at a critical juncture. It also suffered from too much structural flex, and its 120 hp 232 CID V8 did not deliver performance commensurate with its very sleek looks and low build. This is the hardtop Starliner.
The pillared coupe was called the Starlight. Both came in Champion (6 cyl) and Commander (V8) versions.
Although Studebaker design consultant Raymond Loewy didn’t design it himself, his influence was clearly a European one, and it’s not too much of a stretch to compare aspects of it to the 1955 Citroen DS.
Given the sales disappointment of the “Loewy” coupes, by 1955 Studebaker was taking a different tack with them, given them a decidedly more American look and feel, to the extent possible with their extremely limited budgets. The 1955 Speedster was a move upscale, with lavish appointments and extensive use of chrome trim.
In 1956, an upright front grille was grafted on to the svelte original front end to emphasize that a more brash and masculine American look was taking over from the rather feminine original. That warranted a new name, the Hawk. It came in several variants, the top of the line being the Golden Hawk, sporting a 352 Packard V8 in 1956 and a supercharged Studebaker 289 V8 in 1957, both rated at the same 275 hp.
The 1957 Hawk also sprouted some period-correct fins at the rear, completing the transformation from Loewy coupe. Well, it’s hardly a true transformation, but this is all that Studebaker could afford. And this is how the Hawk would stay essentially the same through 1961. This is the pillared coupe Silver Hawk; the Golden Hawk was still a hardtop through 1958, after which time the Hawk had to make do with the unfashionably thick pillars and window surrounds. It already looked dated in 1958.
There were only a few detail trim changes in the Hawk’s last three years (1959–1961). The commonly told story is that Studebaker was going to retire the Hawk in 1959 and put all its eggs in its new compact Lark, but stodgy dealers were a bit freaked out by the idea of only having one Studebaker to sell and pushed hard to keep the Hawk alive. More like on life-support, as Hawk sales were abysmally low in those last three year, selling 7,788 times in 1959, 4,280 times in 1960, and a mere 3,663 times in 1961, despite some efforts by new Studebaker President Sherwood Egbert to inject some new life into the dying raptor for ’61.
The Hawk didn’t die; in 1962 it got perhaps the most effective restyle for the bucks of any car ever, in this case by Brooks Stevens. The changes to create the Gran Turismo Hawk were mostly just a new roof as well as having its wings clipped, but these two changes gave the venerable coupe three more years to soldier on with a bit of grace before it was given the coup de grâce. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
Meanwhile, back in 1961 the Hawk was really showing its age. That sloping coupe roof with the thick pillars and window frames, the utterly obsolete fins, the overly-long wheelbase at the rear, and all the other details that gave away its age, back at a time when automotive design was changing so rapidly. It’s a credit to the advanced aspects of the “Loewy” coupe that it could still show its face in 1961 at all.
It’s probably not necessary, but this is how other new cars looked in 1961.
As well as this.
So yes, those 3,663 intrepid folks that stepped up to buy a new Hawk in 1961 were either Studebaker diehards or were…legally blind?
How else could they overlook such anachronisms as the Hawk’s side cowl fresh air intakes?
Or the crude transition where the fins were grafted on?
And where they ended? These were bad enough in 1957, but by 1961, they were hopelessly out of date. And no, folks in 1961 were not ready for mid-fifties retro-kitsch.
The only hope for the Hawk lay inside or beneath its aged surfaces. Of course, there were undoubtedly a handful who saw its vintage styling as evergreen charming; the Hawk could be seen as an analogue to Great Britain’s nigh-near eternal Bristol coupe.
The Bristol 407 from 1961 even shared certain stylistic aspects with the Hawk, including the tapered front end with an upright grille and traditional headlights mounted at the front end of those excessively long front fenders/wings. But then the Loewy Coupe/Hawk/GT Hawk’s 12-year lifespan is a mere flash in the pan compared to the Bristol’s 50-plus years on the same basic prewar chassis. The Avanti II tried a bit harder to become America’s Bristol, but it eventually lost the plot. The Bristol could only have happened in the UK.
Once Studebaker decided to keep the venerable Hawk around after 1958, how was it to be marketed? In 1959, there was only the Silver Hawk, and the ad was quite true; there was “no car quite like the Silver Hawk”, a personal coupe powered by the little 90 hp 169.6 CID flathead six that also powered the Lark. Yet 2,417 chose the six over the available 180 hp and 195 hp versions of the 259 CID V8.
Studebaker buyers were in a league of their own, and no, they did not look like these attractive young people in the ad. More like a crusty old curmudgeon of a retired farmer in Indiana.
Since glamorous folks in dinner jackets weren’t buying it, for 1960, Studebaker leaned into sportiness. The ancient little six was jettisoned and a perkier 210 hp 289 V8 was now made standard; optional was the 225 hp version with a four barrel and dual exhausts. Given that Chevrolet, Ford and Plymouth were fielding very hot engines with 350 hp or more, the Hawk’s sportiness was a bit too subtle for the booming performance market at the time.
So, the ante was upped some for 1961, thanks to the youthful energy injected into the staid old South Bend firm by its new President Sherwood Egbert, who fathered the Avanti and godfathered Andy Granatelli, who brought all sorts of high-performance tricks back to South Bend, including an updated version of the McCulloch supercharger to which his Paxton Products firm had bought the rights. But once again we’re getting a bit ahead of ourselves.
But the 1961 Hawk did get some new chops, including a shift away from just plain American sportiness to the “continental Gran Turismo tradition”.
Studebaker was doing a full 360, back to the European influence it touted with the ’53 Loewy coupes. Well, there was no way Studebaker could effectively compete with the massive power being offered by the low-priced Big Three brands with their more modern big-displacement V8s. The drag strip and NASCAR had never been Studebaker’s forte, so let’s go after European sophistication. And at sometime during the 1961 model year, Studebaker started referring to its Hawk as the “new Gran Turismo Hawk,” in preparation for the real thing in 1962.
The owner of this Hawk—not the typical old guy Studebaker guy but a youngish trans woman—saw me shooting and came out of the pizza parlor and showed me what was under the hood. The Paxton supercharger didn’t arrive on production Studebakers until 1963, but this Hawk has been converted to one. That meant a bit of work, as the 1957 Golden Hawk, which had its supercharger mounted in front and on top of the engine required a special hood scoop to clear it.
This installation on the side is like the Avanti R2, which required moving the alternator and some other changes. The supercharged Lark had enough room in its taller engine compartment for the supercharger in front and top.
The supercharger has a label from Erb Products, who rebuilt these units. The Paxton eliminated the complex variable-speed drive mechanism on the McCulloch that was rather failure-prone.
The carb “hood” is not the completely-enclosed box that was used on the high-boost R3 engine, but it is the same as the 290 hp R2, which presumably this essentially is. Performance would be somewhat brisker than the 275 hp supercharged 1957 Golden Hawk, whose performance metric in a vintage review were 0-60 in 9.3; 0-100 in 23.3; 1/4 mile in 17.3 @86 mph. A supercharged GT Hawk posted a 7.4 second 0-60 time. Brisk, but not really hot.
I later watched—and listened—as the owner drove off with a fine rumble and a fine bit of a throaty roar from its dual exhausts.
The interior shows the new bucket seats available in 1961 as well as the Borg-Warner T-10 four speed manual transmission. The very clean instrument panel with its easy-to-read round instruments was of course the kind of throwback that was rather appealing, unlike so many of the overwrought panels at the time.
The back seat was a rather chummy place to be, especially given the Hawk’s long 120-inch wheelbase.
So yes, this Hawk does rather elicit mixed feelings; so out of date yet so charming. There was nothing remotely like it on the American market at the time. Its 3663 buyers obviously knew what they wanted, and it clearly wasn’t what Detroit was offering. They found their rolling anachronism in South Bend and never looked back—until it came time to replace it, if they ever did. One wonders with what?
Related CC reading:
Car Show Classic: 1960 Studebaker Hawk – Rock Bottom? by J.P. Cavanaugh
Automotive History: The Studebaker V8 Engine – Punching Below Its Weight by P.N.
Vintage SCI Review: 1957 Studebaker Golden Hawk – As Fast As The Chrysler 300C, And A Lot Cheaper by P.N.
Curbside Classic: 1953 – 1954 Studebaker Commander Starliner Coupe – Star Light, Star Bright by P.N.
Curbside Classic: 1962 Studebaker Gran Turismo Hawk – A Beautiful Death by PN
Curbside Classic: 1972 Bristol 411 (and Bristol History) – The Last Great British Eccentric by R. Carr
We mustn’t forget that this may have been the very first appearance of that hot 60’s trend of a V8 coupe with bucket seats and a 4 speed. The Corvair Monza may have been out a bit earlier with the bucket seats, but I don’t think any other car combined buckets with the rest of the package. Of course, it could hardly be called influential given the low production numbers.
The Pontiac Bonneville offered that in 1960.
I like what the current owner did to this Hawk – the wire wheels, white letter tires, lowered springs, and a little bit of rake lean into a vintage sporty look that really works here.
Thanks! I did the wheels and tires just last month and love the transformation.
Signed, The Owner 😁
So cool viv!
Your Hawk is now my most favorite featured car I’ve seen on CC.
One of a kind and totally cool!
Aww, thanks!
There’s something about this time period that American cars of this period just had to offer all-new styling ever few years or they’d be regarded as obsolete. This would later change at least for imports – Volvo, Porsche, and Saab sold essentially the same car for decades (I won’t even bring up VW). Eventually even American cars could get away with it – the C3 Corvette and the Fox-body Mustang both had a 3 year longer run than the Loewy coupe/Hawk. The box Caprice (77-90) and (Fleetwood) Brougham (77-92) also had crazy-long runs with few changes. And while their advanced age in their later years was certainly noted, people who bought a Mustang in 1993 weren’t likely questioned why they bought such an obsolete car.
Studebaker at least had the advantage of starting out with a up-to-the-minute design in 1953 – most other American cars still had pontoon fenders in back. Tail fins were passé by 1961, but that didn’t stop most Mopars from having them, and with new designs for the new year no less. Studebaker’s fins were just stick-on affairs that they could have easily deleted for ’61 (as they did the next year), and save a few bucks in the process. The ’61 would have looked better had they retained the hardtop body style available from ’53-58; I never cared for this car’s looks with the heavily-framed windows. Brooks Stevens evidently agreed because his ’62 facelift revived the hardtop and used it exclusively for the rest of its run. One previous Hawk eccentricity that was gone by 1961 was the strange seating configuration. Earlier models were five-seaters – 3 in front, 2 in back. That was finally reversed with the new ’61 front bucket seats; the original fixed rear center armrest had been removed a few years earlier.
My vote for most eccentric American car in 1961 would be the Rambler American coupe. The angles of the A, B, and C pillars all look wrong, and the broad-shouldered fender look that was so dashing on the ’61 Continental looks all wrong here. Plus this funky speedometer with single-digit calibration, with some of those digits looking like they’re about to topple over.
I wonder where Studebaker owners went after the company went belly-up, and would imagine a significant portion switched to Ramblers, although it’s been theorized that many ex-Studebaker buyers may have helped keep Chrysler afloat in the sixties, too.
For Studebaker, it wasn’t just that the Hawk was dated, it was that it was a dated example of a design that had never been very popular to begin with, that was still covered in late ’50s gorp, and — crucially — that was emblematic of an automaker everyone knew had been on life support for years. Even in 1956–1957, it was widely assumed that Studebaker-Packard was going to go under at any moment, so the associations were not exactly positive.
Well now, if owned by Lucius Beebe, I simply must have one. Perhaps he really owned one: but probably not, as they’re not exactly high taste in this form. (The original sure is, though).
My ancient dad’s a train nut, and so we had a couple of Beebe’s ’40’s train coffee tablers. Beautiful things, to be stared at for ages, and the over-wrought prose seemed just so right for a big, bold, over-sized America and its grand machines.
Rather incredibly, there was a ’61 that lived for years on the main road just round the corner from me, way off in this huge but remote island.
That looks quite good with the wire wheels, and without the context of just how out of place this would have been in a 1961 showroom.
Great car
Like the idea of the air intakes on the front fenders.I expect they got water in them pretty quickly though.
I wonder if those fender vents are the reason Studebakers had a bad habit of rusting in a vertical line just ahead of the fender/door gap.
Easy way to tell would be to compare incidence of that rusty vertical line on non-Haqj ’53-57 Studebakers (which had the fender vents) to ’58-66s (which didn’t have the vents except on Hawks)
Yes, I think it looks good as it sits, no I don’t think the 1961 Studebaker was a beautiful car in any sense of the words .
That 1953 greenhouse jumps out and smacks me in the face like a week old fish, ugh .
As they already had the hard top I cannot fathom why they didn’t use it in all models .
I wonder how well these went and handled, finned brake drums were a huge thing back then .
I remember when converting your old Chevy Hot Rod to a T10 tranny meant you’d made it .
-Nate
The 1953 Loewy coupe was (and remains to this day) a beautiful car, and such a shame what became of it. Studebaker immediately bungled (and got progressively worse) what could have been a gamechanger for them.
Peak CC effect this AM. Saw an immaculate Silver Hawk drive by as I was pulling out of a parking lot. A block later I saw another coupe with 4 digit annual production, an AMC Eagle. I think I’ve seen the Eagle before. But the Stude…like an apparition.
The 53 original is beautiful never mind the defects baked in, it was rapidly downhill from there though.
Let’s not forget there’s a song named after this car…sort of!
A hot 57 chevy culd blow the doors of any of these studebakers!
Highest 1957 factory Chevy horsepower was about equal to Studebaker’s, so no doors would be blown off in such a match-up. Also ’57 Chevys were a dime a dozen on the road then, and almost as common in the classic car world now; but I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen a Studebaker Hawk IRL and not at a car show. So the Stude wins, in my book. 😁