Hemmings Motor News has long been the most influential source of information in the collector car hobby. In 2018, the magazine compiled a list of the top 100 American collector cars of all time. On that list at #77 was one of the last gasps of the fabled Studebaker Corporation’s automobile empire. The 1963 Studebaker Avanti, an example of which is for sale on Craigslist in Pelham, New Hampshire, is widely recognized as one of the most beautiful and collectible cars ever built. While many cars on that list are classics that sell for six and seven digits today, you can get this very nice example with just 85,000 miles on the odometer for a reasonable $21,000. Is this cream-colored beauty worth the price of admission? Thanks to T.J. for the find!
The story of the first iteration of the Avanti is sad but glorious. Studebaker was at the end of the road and needed some miracles to stave off the inevitable end. In a design partnership with Raymond Loewy and Associates, Studebaker sunk precious resources into producing a distinctive performance luxury coupe that they hoped would draw customers into the beleaguered dealerships. It did, but the effort wasn’t enough. The end had come.
That end, however, did not come for the Avanti. The design has seen numerous rebirths at the hands of different smaller companies and the overachieving personalities that kept the car’s unique design alive. Why? The answer lies in the basic goodness of the design. When the car debuted no car on the planet resembled it, and, inexplicably, its design features haven’t reappeared on any car since. It is almost as if the car has a certain exclusive aura to it.
Among Avanti lovers, the first version of the car with pure Studebaker lineage and round headlights is the most beloved. This 1963 example is a very original example of what customers flocked to the showrooms to see in 1963. The ad is rather sparse on details, but we are told that the car has just 85,000 miles on the odometer and runs excellently. It came equipped with power steering, power windows, air conditioning, an automatic transmission, and “twin traction.” It has gone through a single repaint and the structurally important “hog troughs” are solid.
The seller was also kind enough to photograph a copy of the production order for the car. Additional options not listed in the ad that came with the car include floor shift, tinted glass, an electric windshield washer pump (we assume), a radio and antenna, a rear speaker for that radio, and a silent muffler. The list presents a picture of a very nice car that likely rode like a dream and was more distinctive than anything on the road except for maybe the new split-window Corvettes that debuted that year.
In the press, the Avanti and the Corvette were often compared. While you could order a Corvette with options that made it fit the role of a luxury sport coupe, it was a sports car at heart. The Avanti was a segment of its own. Sporty, luxurious, distinctive, and airplane-like were good descriptors for what it was. This distinctive niche was large enough to justify the car’s continued existence for decades. That is one way to praise that last gasp of Studebaker. They ended on a very good note.
Why do you think the Avanti lasted so long? Please let us know your opinion in the comments.
Well, first of all, I don’t care for the mention of Hemmings on “our” site. I was a regular viewer there for many years. The mention of BarnFinds got my comments deleted, even though I learned of BarnFinds from an ad there. Hemmings has gone through a lot of changes to keep current, and like many, I lost interest. Old “Ernie” is spinning in his grave, at what his humble little Model A & T site, a 4 page newsletter, has become. Hemmings has a “cost no object” audience, and BarnFinds caters to the rest of us.
As far as the Avanti, one can be brief in why it never caught on,,,it was just too gol-dang weird. Rambler and Studebaker swapped positions for #4 , both not exactly mainstream, but at least Rambler morphed into AMC, Studebaker had nowhere to go, and this car proved it. Don’t get me wrong, huge Studebaker fan. Too bad the rest of the world wasn’t. More like something France would create. Regardless they were neat cars.
As usual HoA hits the nail on the head.
I agree. I advertised my ’66 911 on Hemmings ($199) and got one call, a month after it sold. Ran a facebook ad the same time for less than $10, and had two buyers at my door the next morning, in a bidding war.
Sold it for $199 …
A friend had a new one in maroon. He got pulled over by the police several times for the stock exhaust.Police didn’t believe it was stock.Was a nice car.
A bigger factor was delays in producing the fiberglass body. Seems that GM’s Corvette got priority from the same subcontractor, and Avanti production faced a bottleneck that Studebaker didn’t need.
The car was gorgeous, recognized as such at the time, but they could not build them at a rate to get them into the showrooms.
Oh, and those angled rear corners were used on one car after this- Tom Tjaarda’s beautiful Fiat 124 Spider
Who made you the expert spokesman for this site? I think you have an inferiority complex due to. Rants of superior knowledge and expertise. Enough is enough please!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!*
I concur fully Howard….Hemmings is for the big wallets…Barn finds is for the rest of us…Studie has a very interesting story..” 2 brothers, 2 forges and $68″..the rest is history as they say..back to work says I..
The production order shows the car was originally white. The present tan color would turn off some potential buyers.
I think it’s still the original Avanti white color. I think the lighting in the photos makes it look off.
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Who doesn’t want a car that set a land speed record- Easy to find in large parking lots? Likely the only there 99 times out of a 100 . V8 .. all pros in my book
I recently got to ride in an Avanti. Long term family car my buddy got from his Dad. Very European interior. Plenty of gauges in the dash and black leather bucket seats. 289 and a 4 speed. My buddy drove it hard. Great sound and reasonably good performance. I would love to have one.
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There were 2 types of Studies I didn’t like… the torpedo look and the Avanti but the rest of the Studebaker line were ok in my book. I never liked the Avanti, especially the front end.
I too never liked the front end, but I loved everything else about the styling.
After years of owning expensive euro classics I’ve come around to appreciating the front end, for what it is. I will never “love” the front headlights design, they remind me of pool lights, but the interesting bumper and the low grill design help give some validation to the concept.
Brook Stevens was on an airliner when he suddenly got the inspiration for the silhouette of the Avanti. He drew it on a scrap of paper, and later the design was implemented.
Actually it was Raymond Lowey who designed the Avanti, in an isolated rented house with a select team in California. They had parameters and a deadline – the car had to fit the Lark chassis, and design ready by a couple of months. Lowey took credit for it, but only that he organized the team. The actual designers’ names escape me, but several on that team have been credited.
Studebaker, the car company, was dead of…suicide. It was horrific leadership from Packard, which bought the bailing-out Studebaker management and owners; and Packard, led by James Nance, had no clue how to proceed. By sheer accident they hit on a winner, in the low-investment cobbling of the Lark (the Studebaker body shell, shortened front and rear ends) and the money was used to diversify, not to invest in new product.
By this time, Sherwood Eggbert was hired as CEO from McCullough, with an unspoken understanding that he was to wind the car business down. But Eggbert, a former pilot in his forties, discovered a new passion – hot cars; performance. He decided he wanted to do with Studebaker what DeLorean was doing with Pontiac.
The Studebaker-Packard board let him play for a few years, and gave him his run with the Avanti proposal. But this was when he took ill with cancer. While on medical leave, contract talks at South Bend stalled, and the board made the decision: Let the contract lapse; close South Bend when it does. Contracts with Studebaker dealers could be honored by continuing Lark production at their small Hamilton, Ontario plant, for a time.
It came to pass, and Eggbert was replaced. By then the management team was focusing on making Studebaker’s automotive division as small and un-innovative as possible.
The passage of the new Federal standards on automobiles, sealed the deal, and the board ordered Hamilton’s quick closing in 1966.
“When the car debuted no car on the planet resembled it, and, inexplicably, its design features haven’t reappeared on any car since” Great description, I’ve save this to use when talking about my Bathtub Nash Airflyte. As for the Avanti, the old guy down the street has two in his garage. I’d love to have ‘em in mine. Unique vehicle for sure.
I’ve loved these since the first time I saw one.If these could have been sold easily in Europe I believe it might have saved the fabled company.As a Brit I love the styling, interior etc. I am sure many of my Euro friends feel the same.You just need to look at the Jenser Interceptor to see the influence!Love car..wish I had room for it!!
I was a Marine stationed at NAS Memphis going through aviation school in the fall of 1962 when I first saw the Avanti on the streets of Memphis. I didn’t know what it was as it went by to fast, but it definitely struck a hit with me.it was 6 months later before I knew what it was, but I loved it. $78 a month pay was not going to get one though.
Does it have the Paxton supercharger?
No, since it came with factory AC. Factory let you pick only 1 of 2 available compressors.
You’re right. I forgot that the supercharger wasn’t available on the Avantis due to lack of engine space.
No, a supercharger was available, just not with an AC car. Like I said, pick your compressor: an intake air compressor or a refrigerant compressor, but not both.
Still a beautiful machine and have wanted one since 1963 but was only 14 at the time. Now that I’m in my 70’s still can’t afford one.
Rode in a first generation and a 2nd but still like the first better still saving money to get one .
One of the best values on the market…almost ridiculous. I sometimes wonder if it’s in part because it’s a fiberglass body, but then I’m reminded how the corvettes from this era have seen their values increasing. Difficult to imagine that these extremely low production Avanti’s will ever become “expensive” as we’ve seen almost every marque, foreign and domestic, have their values increase significantly since the 2008 recession, except for the Avanti.
Iike Bob P, I have loved the Avanti since I first saw it when I was 12. I would buy this in a heartbeat if I had the money and a place to put it.
I was working in Colorado back in 2014 as a landman/right of way agent and had an appointment with a landowner to negotiate a permanent right of way easement, crop damages, construction damages, etc. on a new pipeline. After negotiations and prices were agreed upon, we got to talking about cars. After several minutes of discussion, he said let’s go out to my equipment barn. When we got inside, I noticed an old 1920’s car off in the corner, one I had never heard of and he told me what it was and that his dad bought it in the late ’20s and he was going to restore it. Then we walked over to four cars under car covers. The first was a 1963 Avanti with the window sticker still on it! I was blown away. It had a factory 289 V8 with either a supercharger or turbocharger, I can’t remember which; automatic transmission and lots of options. He bought it new. It had less than 9,000 miles and he very rarely drove it. The other three were also Avantis, each one from independent owners of the Avanti Brand name up until the last one in 1985 and one of them was a convertable. All three had Chevy V8 powertrains. He took me to school on all of them, where they were built and for how long before being sold to the next company that bought the rights to the Avanti. He was a walking, talking dictionary on Avantis. What a great afternoon it was visiting with him. I won’t forget it.
Supercharged Avanti is a very rare car. and if a 4 speed ever more obscure. Always liked the first Avanti, sort of like the Avanti II, with the Chevy power, but gravitate more to the original.
The supercharged Studebaker Avanti is really not rare. 4,463 Studebaker Avantis were produced and of those 1,833 were the R2 supercharged version. There were only 9 R3 supercharged versions made so the R3 is rare (command serious money), but not the R2 is not rare. So, almost 40% of the production was supercharged. The 4 speed, however, is rare.
A cousin of mine, after owning a couple variations of hawks, bought a similar car brand new… Always loved his studies. He ended up getting married having kids and traded in the avanti for a Ford extended van for the family.. His brother was the sports car guy, Tr4 irs, sunbeam tiger, New 240z… Days gone by
Always loved the design. But “rode like a dream”? I got to drive a ‘63 a couple decades ago; I think it was an R-2. The steering was very direct but I found the ride to be harsh, very much like something for racing. Maybe the example I was in was in need of suspension work? If others have a different perspective I’d certainly like to hear it.
Poor business management and no crystal ball to see the future spelled the end of Studebaker. Too bad, a case of too much too late.
Just like Kaiser, Hudson, Packard, and all the others, they could not hold out in the GM/Ford duopoly. Chrysler barely made it……AMC, a lifeboat of weathered survivors bouyed by Jeep, was rescued by Renault.
This Avanti is definitely white – the interior shot shows the color better. Actually, the Avanti styling influence can be found on many present day vehicles – the Avanti was essentially grille-less with air intakes below the bumper. Yes, the Avanti was different and that was by design. It wasn’t Studebaker’s first euro-look auto – the 1953 was the first, also a Raymond Lowry studio Creation. The Avanti was by all accounts a successful failure: stunning, brilliant, different and polarizing all at once, but not enough to carry Studebaker over the finish line.
This car looks to be in good condition, and Avantis are finally getting love from outside the Studebaker community.
Though fewer than 6000 of the original cars were built, parts are available through the aftermarket. Many off the shelf parts from other Studebaker models were used.
This is a good specimen of a rare, appreciating vehicle.
The Raymond Loewy styling is attractive even today. I’ve followed these cars for many years. The asking price isn’t out of line.
It’s always a pleasure for me to see something on an Avanti, be it Studebaker or stand-alone. I have to really credit the South Bend dealer partners who committed to saving the Avanti when Studebaker packed up for its move to Canada (like a terminally-ill elephant going to the elephant’s graveyard).
Something I’ve always noticed missing from any write-up or comment of the Avanti; maybe I am the only one to see it, but I will dare to throw the gauntlet down. This article mentions comparisons between Avanti and Corvette back in the day. Though I do not dispute that being the case, the Avanti would have been much better compared to another model of car…had it existed.
Many official historians and nearly all fans will loudly trumpet Ford’s Mustang as the first-ever pony-car. I submit they are all wrong. Mustang was the first mass-produced pony-car, NOT the first, any more than the Model T was the first motorcar (just the first mass-produced one). Avanti came first and deserves that historical recognition…unless better-versed Big-S enthusiasts want to argue that place in history for the Hawk.
So funny how a corporation that was around for already 100 years, and which the decade prior had been credited with making some of the safest cars in America, could just shrivel up and die like that. It’s a pity they did; the Avanti could have been a genuine rival to Mustang, Camaro, Firebird, Challenger, and Barracuda in the freshly-born pony-car field…while holding the crown as the launcher of the genre. Again, all this is my observation, and subject to refutation and ridicule by anyone who can prove me wrong.
You’re absolutely right about the 1963 Avanti muscle vs 1964.5 Mustang.
I believe there were a few other “muscle” cars that preceded the Tang, GTO for one. But when you sell one million Mustangs I guess you can claim the title.
I probably would not compare the Mustang with the Avanti. To me, a Pony Car is based on the mechanicals of a cheap compact, and is pretty basic off the shelf, although Ford was more than happy to sell expensive options!
The Avanti was more of a GT. No sixes, no strippers, and I think it was the fastest car you could buy in 1963, if you got the supercharger.
Well… the Avanti frame is a modified Lark convertible frame, the engine is a version of the V8 Studebaker came out with in 1951. So the Avanti really is based on the mechanicals of the Lark.
And… Ford bought an Avanti when they were working on the Mustang, took the car apart to examine how it was built and they were quite impressed. I believe that car is now at the Henry Ford Museum (put back together!).
I was thinking the same thing that the avanti had all the right ingredients to be called a pony car . 2+2 long hood short rear etc but since I don’t know everything I figured there must be some reason no one else has brought it up.. until now I can see I’m not the only one not that it really matters but I do know the more i learn about avantis they really were way ahead of their time in many ways
Tony, I agree the Avanti was arguably the first Pony car. The Hawk was also a performance car, so one could argue it’s place in history as the first muscle car. Forgot to mention previously, but the Avanti integrated roll bar is another design feature that has found its way onto post-Studebaker vehicles on a limited basis. Raymond Loewy, the Avanti and Studebaker will never be forgotten in the annals of the American automobile. The buyer of this Avanti will have their own slice of that great history.
When I was a kid sometime in the 60’s I was watching a Mr. Ed rerun and saw the most amazing car, I had no idea what it was but it was the coolest thing I’d ever seen.
It was owned by the Post’s rich neighbor, Mr. Addison, and it was an Avanti. (Mr. Ed was sponsored by Studebaker).
Studebaker’s product placement advertising worked on me, but sadly Stude was long gone when I was old enough to buy a new car.