The GTO has become universally acclaimed as the first of the “muscle cars”, a smaller sedan/coupe packing the punch of a hot V8 along with a four-on-the-floor and a full complement of suspension and brake upgrades. It arrived in the spring of 1964, to universal acclaim and quickly became a hot seller.
But already one year earlier, in the spring of 1963 as a late model year addition, Studebaker offered something almost identical in concept and performance, never mind the disc brakes that weren’t even available on the GTO. Thanks to CC reader Mike Hayes, who uploaded this Motor Trend review at the Cohort, you can now shoot down those folks that claim that the GTO was the first of its kind.
The Super Lark was part of a big performance push at Studebaker, thanks to the youthful (but soon to be ailing) President Sherwood Egbert, who also fathered the Avanti. Bringing in Andy Granatelli and his Paxton supercharger into the mix was a key ingredient, as the Studebaker V8 was not inherently a well-breathing engine. Blowing in air at some 5-6 lbs of pressure, the 289 CID mill made 290 hp. That was good for a very brisk 7.3 second 0-60 sprint, and a 90 mph trap speed in the 1/4 mile run. The ET of 15.8 seconds was hampered by a balky shifter for the Warner T-10 four speed.
In addition to the supercharged R2, there were also two specially-prepared 304.5 cubic inch engines available; the 335 hp supercharged R3 and the 280 hp naturally-aspirated (with two four barrel carbs) R4. How many of those were ever sold? But a 335hp R3 Super Lark was quite the bomb.
The performance package also included substantial suspension upgrades, including radius rods at the rear axle to eliminate axle hop during acceleration. Springs were stiffer, and there were adjustable shocks. The one big deficit was the very slow steering with 4.7 turns lock-to-lock. This car really deserved quicker steering, as the handling was praised highly. The Super Lark’s braking was in a whole other league compared to all other American cars at the time; even the Corvette still had drums in ’64. The Lark stopped straight without any fuss repeatedly from its 123 mph top speed. Try that, GTO!
And the Lark was praised for its exceptional roominess given its rather modest 109″ wheelbase (four doors and wagons had 113″). And the dash was padded and there was full instrumentation. Build quality was also considered very good.
With the minor exceptions of the slow steering and balky shifter (Hello Hurst!), this was a shockingly competent car for 1964. Of course its target younger buyers never showed up, and along with other disappointments in 1964, Studebaker’s last hurrah ended within a year. The 1965s, built in Canada, resorted to using Chevy engines, a 194 inch six and a mild 283 V8. The Super Lark party was over, in more ways than one.
The quality of this vintage commercial is terrible, but it does give one a picture (albeit fuzzy) of how Studebaker was trying to reposition itself.
Here’s another one that’s clearer.
And finally, a ’63 R3 Super Lark shutting down a ’69 GTO, in the Pure Stock class.
Earlier this year I picked up a compilation of vintage Hot Rod Magazine road tests from the muscle car era & this car was the first. From reading the article it seems that HRM (which was a sibling magazine to MT) was going drag race it’s Super Lark, but it didn’t reprint any subsequent articles to show how it did.
I have never bought into the “GTO Supercar” hype/myth….then or now.
Many GTO magazine test cars were provided by Royal Pontiac, a dealership in Royal Oak, Michigan.
These test cars were heavily modified with camshafts, cylinder head improvement, more aggressive final drive ratios……even larger than stock engines substituted.
Out in the “Real World”, a stock GTO was quite often humiliated by a stock 383/413 Mopar or Olds 442……much to the amazement and embarrassment of the new GTO owner.
This article proves that there was indeed quicker alternatives to the media blitzed GTO.
GTO owner here. I agree on all your points. In the end it still didn’t matter much. The GTO had the complete package, the image, the looks, the interior, the options, the graphics, the development etc, all backed up by decent performance and a tremendously effective marketing program. Only the Mustang came close to having such a well rounded presentation. Pop bands even wrote songs about the “mighty GTO”, something they didn’t do for a 442. The GTO was highly desirable in the marketplace, because everyone wanted a piece of that package, but most buyers weren’t going to the strip.
One pop band did get a Top 10 with a song devoted to the GTO, “Little GTO” by Ronnie and the Daytonas.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6c-bGVt3Pp8
Also, some engines got a song like Chevy’s big-block 409 by the Beach Boys.
Too bad then there was no songs devoted to the Studebaker Avanti….
There were two groups called The Avantis. One was a SoCal surf group and the other a Midwest soul act. The latter recorded the original “Keep On Dancing” in 1964 that became a smash the year after for The Gentrys.
It wasn’t just the Mopars or the Olds; a 396 Chevelle or L79 Nova would make short work of a Goat, as well. Tri-Power GTOs ran pretty well, but it was a headache to keep all the carbs in sync.
I once read that the sixties’ musclecar was a marketing man’s wet dream, and that pretty much sums up the GTO. It might have ushered in the musclecar era, but it was far from the fastest. About the only car that was slower was a 390 Ford. But the GTO won the sales race, and that’s what counted.
Agree with rudiger.
The heavy “boat anchor” (as it was known on the street) FE 390 sounded good, supplied lots of off idle torque, but not much past about…..2000 rpm?
Fine for my Mother’s Ford Country Sedan station wagon, but never a serious “player” on the streets.
The GTO was a fine Madison Avenue advertising example of “selling the sizzle without the steak”.
Even a much smaller, still under-rated even today, Mopar 340, in the lightweight Duster/Dart body, would often “suck the headlights out” of a hapless GTO.
Yeah, the 340 A-body Mopar took over where the 2nd gen L79 Nova left off. Neither would have had much trouble beating a stock GTO. I might even go so far as to suggest that the featured Super Lark, while not technically starting the musclecar craze like the GTO, might be considered the first ‘compact’ musclecar in the same category as the L79 Nova and 340 Mopar.
Oddly, the 3rd gen Nova never had much street cred. It was heavier than the previous version and maybe the weight distribution of the new body wasn’t as good. I personally knew a guy who intentionally blew up one of those Novas because it was so inconsistent at the dragstrip. Still, with the availability of the 396, you’d have thought it would have been okay. I suspect it was one of those marketing things where Chevrolet didn’t want a fast Nova to cannibalize higher-profit Camaro sales.
I knew another guy who had to have a GTO after he got out of the Army in ’68. He was very disappointed in its performance, not to mention that the rear window package tray had begun to rust even before it was a year old. He traded it for a much better ’69 W-30 442 (the one with the under bumper air scoops).
That’s what I’m talkin bout! 🙂
From late 1961 to late 1963 Studebaker did more with less than perhaps any company ever. Everything I have ever read about these suggests that they were the real thing. Many cars have done one thing well but these had speed, handling and (most importantly ) brakes. Local to me there is an R2 Super Hawk that is undergoing a restoration. I would like to find that car and write something about it.
I have read that Studebaker was working on increasing the displacement of its V8 and had a prototype that was about 340 cubic inches. Apparently there was plenty of meat in the blocks but the castings had to be redesigned to reconfigure the water passages. It is too bad that all the performance work came to naught for lack of buyers.
Oh, and that 63 Lark in the drag racing video is probably the “Stude Tomato” driven by Ted Harbit who has been drag racing longer than many of us have been alive. He has been racing Studebakers for decades and is well over 80 now but can still make a supercharged Stude V8 sing.
http://www.hemmings.com/magazine/mus/2007/08/Flyin–Tomato—1963-Studebaker-Super-Lark/1495511.html
A steel-body Avanti! (The technical specifications are identical or nearly so).
Blowing the doors off a GTO – that’s precious!
The sad thing is that by the time this magazine hit newsstands (or showed up in the mailbox) in mid November, time was almost up given the December 8 shutdown announcement. I have always wondered if anything might have changed if the decision had been made, say, the following March or April. Early sales of 64 models showed no improvement from 63, but there had been a bunch of leftover 63s in inventory after the 64s were introduced. And then there was the Kennedy assassination which killed everyone’s car sales for a good part of November.
Of course the Mustang would have sucked all of the air out of the market after the spring of 1964 and the 1964 GM A body was still likely to dominate the class. But at least we would have gotten more of these before the lights went out in South Bend.
Studebaker corporate was already well along with their plan to diversify and then get out of the car business as union and dealer contracts wore out.
Agreed, I have a bunch of car magazines from that era which show Studebaker was irrelevant to most buyers’ decisions. The entire enterprise had a stench of death and no one wanted to be stuck with an orphan brand. It had happened before, to Kaiser, Willys, Nash, Hudson and Packard. Orphan brands quickly become worthless and bring an undersireable image for their owners. Only the most diehard repeat buyers or skinflint bargain hunters considered Studebaker. Its difficult to turn such a negative impression around.
I will add, when Studebaker moved all production to Canada, there was some positive reaction there, and patriotic support claiming it was Canada’s own car, with a suggestion of a brighter future.
That positive reaction in Canada would have been like whistling past the graveyard. The Canada plant had no engine making capability and no R&D facilities. They made the best of it, but the effort was doomed from the start.
“Studees”, or “Studes”, as Aussies inevitably nicknamed them, were very well-regarded here. They raced them at the 500 mile race at Philip Island (still the site of the Australian round of MotoGP) and then the 500 mile (later 1000k) yearly race at Mt Panorama, Bathurst. That circuit, 3.8 miles long, rises and falls 600ft in it’s length, and is still for crazies only. Especially back when crowding around hordes of Minis, Lotus Cortinas, Vauxhall Vivas, Renault R8’s, VW Beetles (no, really!) Toyota Coronas, Triumph 2000’s, Valiants, Citroen ID’s, Mercedes 220’s, you name it, with no fencing or roll cages. It has a very long downhill straight (now with a slowing kink for safety) where fast cars like the Stude would easily hit over 120mph – ending in a 35 mph 90 degree left hander, I might add. The big Port Melbourne assembled South Benders usually led the race until the brakes betrayed them, but they always finished well.
The entries had to be locally available (maybe even made here, as ALL the brands mentioned above were) in at least 100 copies, and classes were determined by price for a while. Studes were assembled here, but I didn’t think any 2-doors were, let alone hot ones, but what seems to be an R4 raced there in ’65-’68.
For the benefit of Our Man In Indianapolis, here is a link about that very car. Enjoy, Counsellor Cavanaugh.
https://www.carsales.com.au/editorial/details/from-the-classifieds-1964-studebaker-commander-29363/
And a photo leading the pack there.
http://www.studebakerracing.com/aust651L.jpg
The stock wheels on Studes were up to race conditions which had them pitting but watch Utube of the 64 event and new wheel assemblies complete with drums were there ready to bolt on, Studes werent the only cars with that issue but they were certainly the best prepared for it, Studebakers were also used as police highway pursuit cars in some Aussie states so the performance was a known thing.
Now then you mentionned Aussie Studes from Down Under. The guys of the Aussie cop drama “Homicide” used a Studebaker in the first season opening.
Let’s face it. No matter how fast Studes went, they still had a dorky image.
The GTO driver, on the other hand, was cool standing still!
The GTO driver didn’t look so “cool” when a “lesser” big or small block Mopar, Olds 455 442 model or Chevelle SS 396 blew past him and showed him up in a stoplight race!
Ha Ha, Mopar or Chevy I can see, Olds not so much.
Let’s not even mention FoMoCo!
The higher horsepower Olds and Buick Big Block V8 engines were under-rated and not as well known in the mid/late 1960’s as the Pontiac and Chevy engines were.
The Olds W30 455 engine and the Buick Stage 1 455 engine (totally different engines, just the same size in cubic inches) were forces to be reckoned with “on the street”.
But in 1964 the top engine in the F-85 was the 4 bbl 330 (because Oldsmobile followed the GM-decreed displacement limits for the A body). The Buick was even less powerful with, what, a 301? (I forget).
Things would change a lot over the next two or three years.
Friend have a 68 Olds Cutlass S with slightly modified 455 and manual modern Tremec 5 speed transmission along with some modifications on the suspension. Wow what a beast, while still looks classic!
There is a link to video, enjoy! https://youtu.be/tvjeXwfO8TY
JP: Buick and Olds “played the game” of defying the corporate post-400 cubic inch limit by advertising/posting torque numbers of their engines, not actual cubic inch or horsepower ratings in the early 1960’s.
This was all in the past by around 1968.
GTO drivers were largely poseurs that wished to be bold and brash but oftentimes failed. Studebakers, meanwhile, were for those who wanted something different and discerning at the same time. Yes I’m biased.
One off the most vivid images of the stereotypical GTO driver was Warren Oates in the iconic car movie, Two Lane Blacktop.
Speaking of dorky musclecars, I wonder if the spiritual successor to the Super Lark would be the 1969 SC/Rambler.
It probably wouldn’t have made a lot of difference in the end, but imagine that, instead of the Avanti, Studebaker had gotten the Sceptre concept into production, powered by the 340ci engine.
Everyone justifiably remembers 1963 as the year of the Riviera and Corvette, but a 1963 340 Sceptre might have given those two classics a run for their money.
The Sceptre was only created by Brooks Stevens in 1963 and it was intended to be a 1966 model. It would have had an uphill fight against the Riviera, Toronado, etc.
The “shortnosed” David E. Davis Jr. in the first film clip!
From what I’ve read there were only 10 R3 cars built and only one was a Lark, though that one still exists (link below). Likewise there was one R4 Lark built. However, for some reason 120 of the 304.5 engines were built, and many of these have subsequently found their way into various Studes.
I recall reading about the R3/R4 program from a Studebaker insider – can’t remember who – in Collectible Automobile (IIRC). The R series engines were originally intended for just the Avanti, but the production delays along with some customers preferring the Lark or Hawk styling lead to the hot engines being available throughout the entire car lineup. The promotions they did have emphasized top speed, which while impressive was less important the buyers they were targeting than 0-60 times would have been.
Publicity was problematic as Studebaker didn’t promote the performance models heavily in advertising. Some of the problem resulted from the slow spread of automotive-related news in 1963. Nowadays a manufacturer issues a press release and the online car sites report on it the same day, and potential customers will read it sometimes within hours. It wasn’t like that back then of course, so the Bonneville records were noted by the car mags, which wrote stories and published their upcoming editions in the weeks afterward, then mailed out the magazines to subscribers and placed them on newsstands where they’d be purchased over the next month. In all there was often a 2 or 3 month lag between things happening in the new-car scene and potential customers learning about it. Road tests like this one became available in November, and of course the Kennedy assassination usurped news coverage about new cars by the end of the month. Even if Stude had managed to get the news out, the window for selling Super Larks was short; sales of cars like the Falcon Sprint and its counterparts at GM and Mopar would collapse in mid-’64 after the Mustang became available, and Super Lark sales would have undoubtedly done the same.
This is the first I’ve heard of the Carbumeter – did these ever reach production, and are there any left?
Why was the Super Hawk faster than the Super Lark? I would have expected the opposite, assuming the shorter car is also lighter.
Links:
The one factory built Lark R3: http://www.hemmings.com/magazine/mus/2004/08/South-Bend-Stealth—1964-Studebaker-Super-Lark-R3/1280872.html
A Lark R2: http://www.hemmings.com/magazine/mus/2015/09/Studependous—1963-Studebaker-Lark-R2/3748934.html
Another Lark R3: http://www.hemmings.com/magazine/mus/2005/02/Sizzling-Studebaker/1281127.html
High performance Larks – http://www.streetmusclemag.com/features/car-features/muscle-cars-you-should-know-studebaker-super-lark/
I suspect that the Hawk had better aerodynamics than the Lark which would make a difference at the high speeds they could reach.
As for publicity, when the Super Lark made its debut in 1963 it got skunked by a Pontiac LeMans in a road test we have written up here before (https://www.curbsideclassic.com/automotive-histories/automotive-history-1963-days-popular-science-tests-the-hot-compacts/)
A look at the published specs makes me conclude that there was no way that should have happened except for what was surely specially prepared ringer that was in all likelihood a 389 or 421 instead of the 326 it was supposed to be.
If there is only one R4, what is this that I phitographed in Rockville, MD last week?
Another view…
And another…
Rear view. All of these images are properly oriented on my screen….
Clearly not a genuine original R4, as this is a ’61 Lark and the R4 (and R2-R3) didn’t arrive until mid-year 1963. Did it claim to be an R4? It wouldn’t be hard to make any 289 look like one.
It had a R4 badge on the grille….zoom in and you can see it..:
That means very little. How many re-created hemi cars have you seen? Hundreds; maybe thousands. Except that in this case, it can’t even be an authentic clone, because the R2-3-4 didn’t exist until late 1963. That alone tells you that this isn’t an original. And that makes it very suspicious, but of course we can’t know absolutely for sure if it’s an R-4 engine. The odds are very low. it’s a common thing to…um…dream a little. 🙂
The R4 did not exist before the 1964 model year, and your photo is of a 61. My guess: there has been a small but active group of Studebaker performance enthusiasts who have found countless ways to wring more out of those great V8 engines. There have been some cool manifolds fabbed for these engines in modern times and I would bet this is one. I also understand that there was a small number of built R4 engines and/or R4 components that did not make it into cars before production shut down and I suspect these have all made their way into cars by now. So it could be one of those too.
Anybody who wants to read the long, slow story of Studebaker’s decline ought to pick up Studebaker: The Postwar Years by Richard. M. Langworth. It’s a really good read – I recommend it. Though long out of print, it’s readily available at quite reasonable prices from Amazon.
Ah, the near-mythical Super Lark. I can’t name a better sleeper in it’s time period than that! It seems as though those good folks at South Bend really liked birds, didn’t they?
Unfortunately, “Dodo” would have been been the most appropriate bird name….
Mag wheels and a racing stripe just doesn’t quite boost the Lark image, which is all that truly mattered with street performance cars anyway. There were faster cars and “giant killers” scattered all through the Muscle car era, but “sleepers” have always been an acquired taste and mostly reserved for hardcore racers, who didn’t buy new cars even then. Backyard built hot rods of the era would waste stock GTOs too(it was the plot of a movie!) but that’s not really the full picture, is it? Pontiac got the package right with the GTO, that’s the endearing legacy of it. It wasn’t that it was the fastest car on the street, it was that it had all the ingredients of the fastest cars of the street, finally put together neatly in an a fresh good looking showroom worthy package.
The GTO was successful mostly because it was the first in its market segment. Really, the closest anyone else had at the time were the full-size Mopars that had been downsized in 1962.
As the other manufacturers and GM divisions caught on, they were able to provide superior performing cars which dulled the GTO’s appeal. But there’s no denying that, in the beginning, the GTO had what it takes.
The car that would eventually dethrone the GTO would be the Road Runner. For the first time, in 1969, the GTO would fall from number one in musclecar sales to number three, behind the Road Runner and Chevelle SS396. But from 1964 through 1968, the GTO was king.
Thank you for pointing this out. All the comparison to SS396Chevelle, 340 Duster, L79 Nova etc is irrelevant to what the GTO was in 1964. On the other hand, the Studebaker is cooler in every way … certainly from a 2018 perspective.
Remember reading this very article when it arrived in the mail as I was a subscriber. Sad time for me, I figured that by then it was over for Studebaker. Looked like I would never own one. Would have preferred an Avanti or Hawk though. At the time, I wasn’t even old enough to drive. My chance came several years later when I bought a 1962 V-8 with Overdrive and 4:11 Twin – traction for $75. Pretty quick and lots of fun. Didn’t look like much, quite a “sleeper” with the O/D locked out! Got my moneys worth and then some.
This article is amazing. I was a child of the ’60’s. And Studebakers were the ultimate dork machines at that time. The Avanti seemed like a rare cool anomaly but the rest….yuck.
But thanks to Paul and numerous others for the many articles on the final years of Studebaker including many links to other articles on their “R” code cars, I am absolutely stunned by what they tried to with what they had. Wow! These are anything but “dorkmobiles”! Thank you all for enlightening me.
It almost appears that if the board of directors had a change of heart, and Studebaker hired an advertising and PR firm like Pontiac had, history would be a lot different.
Bob
Interesting article about a little-known automobile. I had 2 1964 Larks at different times and while neither was even close to that one off example tested they were both excellent driving machines. I think the company had pretty much planned on exiting the auto business around 1962 when they refused to invest capital in major retooling and diverted funds to other businesses. The path to survival oddly was probably shown by the 65 and 66 Canadian models which by using the excellent SBC (I owned one of these also) could have continued as a specialty small scale manufacturer much like the Avanti did.
This Lark is like the pocket protector, crew cut, short sleeve white dress shirt, thick rimmed glasses engineers that developed it. GM had similar types working on the GTO. One big difference was the modern ’64 GM A-body platform vs much older Studebaker underpinnings. Others were Bill MItchell styling and big marketing budgets.
Other than brakes, what was really superior about this Lark anyway? It’s underdog image appeals to this group in 2018, but all I can remember from back then is my grandfather’s dorky brown Lark. Sorry, guys.
I’m surprised no one mentioned that John DeLorean, the father of the GTO, actually came out of Studebaker Packard Corp. Also, if rumors are true, John Delorion actually saw the first Super Lark at the 1962 NY auto show while bull crapping with his old friends at Studebaker. It inspired him to do something similar to a Pontiac Tempest. So, it’s very possible that if there was no Super Lark there would never have been a GTO.