The CC Effect™ is real! I saw this ’63 Lark Daytona two days after J.P. Cavanaugh’s post. There it was, just outside the backstop fence of the baseball area of a local park.
Actually, on this side it’s a L A R:
“My, what big whitewalls you have!”, said Little –Red– –Beige– Champagne Gold Poly Riding Hood. These are looking rather yellow under the curb scuffs…
…because they are very, very old. They’re Dunlop Gold Seal Sports, size G78-15. The lack of an R after the G means these aren’t radials (see how tall they sit where they meet the road?). That alphanumeric tire sizing system went out with Disco, and this model and size of tire was among those recalled in 1978-’79 in the United States. These tires are most of half a century old, then, and from that I infer this car is recently out of long hibernation. But not like yesterday-recently; the licence plate sticker expired last August, which means this car’s being driven. Maybe not a lot, but on ancient tires like this, more than a couple hundred feet at very low speed is foolhardy. G78-15 is right between a P215/75R15 and a P225/70R15; that’s a lot more tire than GM, for example, were putting on cars bigger than this.
(BC has discontinued registration decals, so it’s no longer possible to tell at a glance if a car’s registration is expired. Which hasn’t stopped the Vancouver parking-violation hotline’s recorded voice asking callers to check if the car they’re reporting has a valid registration sticker.)
Onward! Vestiges of the tailfin era:
And here’s the whole side of the car:
A fair number of Studebakers make me think they’re alternate-timeline Mopars from about the same era. This is one of them.
There’s a great deal of design commonality with the ’60 Valiant here, except this Studebaker’s grille is projected from the headlamp plane.
The front turn signals are amber, newly for ’63. Look closely at them and you can see the bulb, behind the “bullseye” in the lens optics, is at the inboard end of the signal. Configuring it this way with its centroid away from the low beam, meant it could be a less-expensive, lower-output turn signal (in accord with SAE standards; actual legal-force regulations were still five years in the future when this car was built).
It’s an actual four-letter L A R K on the left side…
…though from the rear it’s a S T U D E B K E:
There’s a lot to see here, and a lot to like. The design elements work well together, and this looks like more bolts holding on the bumper bar than GM; Ford, or Chrysler tended to use. The licence plate lights are tidily integral to the bumper ‘guards’. That gasoline cap is a Stant item; the shape of the black (sometimes they were chrome) handlebar set into that round chrome recess is the tell. Looks as though the trunk lid opens wide.
If the twin tailpipes weren’t clue enough, here’s the badge:
I like these lights, too. The reversing lamp lens is in about the same age-crazed condition as the chrome surrounding it:
The interior’s in generally remarkable condition, with some withered vinyl here and there. White plastic rocker switches, because S T U D E B A K E R:
Driver wasn’t a very good parker!
Eh. Big, wide, quiet street. And they’re close enough to the curb not to get a ticket. So ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (maybe they were tryna avoid scuffing the tires!)
Rear bumper sticker: CAA (It never occurred to me before that there’s a CANADIAN version of the AAA.)
American tourists are sometimes shocked that Canada has its own money and laws and stuff; those “Nothing To Declare” customs-and-immigration TV shows are full of “Whaddya mean, ‘can’t have my guns’?! I’ve got a concealed-carry permit and there’s a little thing called the Second Amendment!!” types of sequences.
So–how does a police officer in B.C. know if a car’s registration is current?
Judging by the sequence of letters and digits, that’s a fairly recent license plate.
At a glance, an officer’s just like any other observer—no way to tell. Their in-car computer knows, either after a punch-in or perhaps by ALPR (automatic licence plate recognition)—I don’t know if that tech is in use here, but it wouldn’t surprise me. These AB1 23C-format plate numbers have been in use since 2014, and starting with an M might date this one to 2021ish, so yeah, this plate is rather newer than the car. Could still wish for a roadworthiness inspection requirement; this car isn’t. Not with these tires.
I saw TS today. My 2018 Golf is GW by comparison.
I wonder what they’ll do next…maybe 12A BC3?
Love it!! I used to not be crazy about the roof on these 2 door hardtops, but I have warmed to it. This Daytona hardtop is the top trim of any 2-door Stude not called Hawk or Avanti that year.
This car looks like it got a paint job long ago, and now there is the patented Studebaker front fender rust trying to poke its way to the surface. That interior is an odd mixture of either gorgeously maintained original, or maybe new/repro seat upholstery – I can’t tell.
I have seen more than one of these gold-painted cars with red interiors among 63 Studes, and this combo came to mind wen we read Roger Carr’s recent piece on the British Royal coronation parade carriage. And wow – those ancient tires!! Yes, they were big for these cars – a G78-15 was the tire fitted to my 1967 Galaxie 500 convertible.
I see an RBC folder on the front seat. I hope they’re not still paying off the loan!
Seriously a cute car. If I had garage space, one of these would have a place in it.
I stumbled into an R-2 as a teenager. For $200 & drove it Home !!
Had to let it go to a salvage yard for $35.00 when I joined the Navy in Aug 1970..
Still ran just Fine without the supercharger belt.
Still Faster than 390 Galaxy
And any 396 / 325 hp Chevell..
I never had the experience of driving it Supercharged ! :- (
Very fine Lark coupe; great find. Perfect condition, for me anyway.
These rather look like early radials to me. And the info in the link on the recall identifies several versions as radials. The original tires would have been 6.50 x 15, which equates to a C78-15, or P175/75 15. Someone put on some oversize tires back in the ’70s.
I’d’ve expected to see “GR78-15” if they were radials, or at least “RADIAL” on the sidewall. 175/75R15 sounds more in line with the tire sizes of the time (and still bigger than the underspecced GM ones you wrote about).
In the fifth photo from bottom, the UTQG (Uniform Tire Quality Grading) info is visible embossed into the sidewall (Traction A, Temperature C). This identifies the tire as 1978 or later when the statute was established, becoming required for street use in the U.S. starting in March 1979. I can’t make out the last two digits of the Treadwear rating, but the first digit is 1 which is quite low. That, along with the sharp almost 90° transition from tread to sidewall, the bulge in the sidewall, and the lack of “R” in the tire size suggest to me this is a bias ply or belted bias-ply tire.
A second look has me agreeing that they are bias ply.
Paul,
Ford and Studebaker rims shared the same basic bolt patterns and center hole. There were a few wider rims from Ford cars that back in the 1960s were a common change to put wider tires and rims on Studebakers. I did so with all my 1962-64 GT Hawks and ’63 Daytona convertible, but I don’t remember which Ford rims interchanged. The Hollander’s Interchange manual up thru 1966 will provide the rim interchange info, but I sold off my set of Hollanders last year.
Since all Studebaker rims in the 1960s were painted white when new, and FoMoCo parts division rims were black, I suspect those rims are FoMoCo parts.
Very nice find, and quite handsome in Champagne Gold. I like the back of the 63’s, but prefer the 64-65 front end treatment. Somebody spec’d out quite a nice Stude back in the day, most Larks I see are strippos.
My daughter is tiring of taking the bus to work in Vancouver, maybe she needs a Studebaker 🙂
I’m with you; ’64 front end all the way. With the quad headlamps; not the singles.
Hey, d’you know anyone who wants a ’63 Avanti with considerable work needed but much work already done to a staggeringly meticulous standard? It’s near Seattle and the owner needs it gone quickly.
I don’t live in a CC-rich area, so when I was returning from a doctor’s office in a recently built exurb full of recently-built houses and townhouses, and I got an eyeful of the familiar face of a ’63 Lark sedan driving past me – familiar in pictures that is – it took a few moments to register that this is real life! and there’s a Studebaker driving past me!
Every year Studebaker had to find a new and different way to disguise that Buick-esque drooping contour that fades away in the front door (sedans) or rear fender (coupes) that’s been there since 1953. !963’s iteration was amongst the best of these, in which a 1961 Impala-style paint stripe that widens toward the rear allows the chrome upper border of this stripe to be horizontal, with the lower border following the drooping crease. ’63 got an attractive facelift and is amongst the tidiest looking of the ’53-66 body style. Could easily have been European (specifically M-B when viewed from the front 3/4 angle), but more English when viewed from the side and a rear section that recalls period Falcons and Darts. It still looks a bit pug-nosed up front where some of the oldest sheetmetal, the 1959 front fenders and hood, was retained for one final year. The “projected” grille was a carryover from 1962 when the grille was pulled forward about two inches for a more three-dimensional look, with a new grille texture and amber turn indicator lenses to freshen it up some. The greenhouse was heavily revised for ’63, finally losing the dated fishbowl windshield, thick window surrounds, and (on 4drs) the fully exposed B pillars. The C pillar was also fattened up following the prevailing trend. The results of all these changes were the first Larks that looked fully ensconced in the Sixties. The only real off-note in the styling is the tortured not-quite-horizontal bulge in the fender surrounding the rear wheels, which like the front clip is reminiscent of early Valiants.
The interior also got a nice makeover. After years of underwhelming metal dashboards, a nice padded modern panel with full instrumentation, paddle switches, and a pull-out vanity was fitted. The headliner still looks great 60 years after it was built, about 50 years longer than a modern headliner lasts before it starts drooping beneath disintegrating foam backing. On rainy days, the new parallel wipers improved the view from the clap-style previously used. The rear and rear-side windows were 1963-only. All this fresh design was complemented by the newly available R-series engines and front disk brakes (something no contemporaneous GM car had, not even the Corvette).
Studebaker sales increased in 1962 and were back in the six-figure range. Sherwood Egbert was shaking things up modernizing the appearance and performance of Studebaker’s full lineup quickly and inexpensively. Enthusiasm and optimism were running rampant in South Bend – all of which would dissipate over the next year along with Egbert’s health.
I’ve seen wide whitewalls of this sort obtained by sanding off the sidewalls of a raised white letter tire, revealing the full coverage of the white area. This voids most manufacturers’ warranties though.
Bummer about the missing letters, there were lots of better leftover letter combos. It could have been ‘Tude, Bake, Stud, or Deb that manufactured this Ark.
I guy I knew in college had a similar vintage Lark. The rear badging was missing most letters, merely reading Stud. I suspect it was intentional.
In the mid-1960s my brother, who was in graduate school at the time, wrote me that he’d gotten a 6-cylinder Lark with overdrive. I’m not sure what year it was, but it wouldn’t have been new. He wrote, “So economical and conservative, I feel like a little old lady.”
The dashboard on these is really nice for the era. Makes me want to get in and take it for a spin. I wonder if I would notice the lack of floor wells?
I meant to ask in the post text what automatic transmission was used in these. I guess it was a BorgWarner 35, which is kind of a pity; I reckon Studebaker could’ve done better.
Studebaker used only BW automatics. The more unusual Automatic Drive (BW DG), through 1955, then the more conventional one, essentially the same as Ford’s initial Fordomatic. There were some improvements over the years.
All their manuals came from BW too.
Good point about this Studebaker being a Mopar on a different timeline. Now that you’ve said it, it looks remarkably like that to me too. The L A R could be easily passed off as one of the AI creations from Tom Halter or Fuzzyman.
I am scared for that poor car just watching it sit on those inflated, yet ancient, tires. Let’s hope the owner didn’t have to drive too far to/from that parking spot.
Looks like this Lark is waiting for the blue bird 🐦 of happiness to bring a savior! Dad had a 59 Lark two door sedan with NO options.
We took a vacation in it 😠 instead of our 😊 DeSoto through the scorching 😡 West. Fortunately we made the trip safely. Shortly after, the Lark began having multiple issues. Even drove it to South Bend when dealer could not fix. Traded it for 61 Valiant. This Daytona at least looks better than 59. SAD 😔 finale for Studebaker. Do hope someone restores this Daytona. 😎
Nice Lark it really is and must still be kept in good running order, Old xply/bias ply tyres are interesting, two came on rims with my Superminx spares, that car seemed to rev quite high at our ridiculously low speed limit, despite having a 3.89;1 sedan diff head fitted, I looked at one of those old 5.90×15 razor blades and rolled one over to my old C5 lo and behold mystery solved the original type tyres equate to 195x65x15 so I went to 14 inch michelin steels again and 185x17s on the drive axle instantly took 450 rpms off crusing speed in theory 15s would fit under the wheel arches but I gave those rims away.
Daniel – Ontario has discontinued use of license plate registration stickers as well, as you probably know. I can’t decide if it would be better to remove my old expired stickers for out of province travel, or just leave them. I do carry my renewal receipt with the car. Those are currently zero cost.
A nice survivor, the color does the design justice .
-Nate
At least with 15″ wheels they can still get radials that are close to the original diameter of the bias plys.
What? they couldn’t go to pep boys and get a set of curb feelers for 6 bucks? Save those wide whites/yellows…
Not unless they went on a long road trip; we don’t have Pep Boys up here.
Canadian Tire.
W’uhh! Are you suggesting that Crappy Tire would sell trinkets‽
Brooks Stevens did such a nice job cleaning up these Studebakers for the 1960s. They somehow look completely modern while still looking old-fashioned; it’s hard to explain. The condition of this one is perfect. I’d get a set of new tires and keep chipping away at it until it was a reliable driver.
I like the looks of this car despite it’s quirky styling especially from the rear end. And the interior is like a time capsule from the early 1960s.
That ’63 Daytona hardtop is one of my all-time favorite Studebakers. I agree that Brooks Stevens did a fantastic job of freshening the looks of that year. I’m not sure I would have gone with gold exterior/red & white interior but that model was a beaut. it’s in my top five 60’s Studebakers: 1) ’64 GT Hawk; 2) ’63 (round headlight) Avanti; 3) ’63 Lark Daytona 2-door HT; 4) ’64 Daytona 2-door HT; 5) ’63 GT Hawk (Honorable Mentions: 6) ’62 GT Hawk; 7) ’63 Lark Daytona convertible; 8) ’64 Daytona convertible).
These were great cars…and FAST! Many were raced. Nice, attractive package. But, those wide whites are from the 50’s. In 63,:the whitewalls were very skinny.