How The Avanti Outlasted The Company It Was Designed to Save

In the end, the company’s problems proved too big for one innovative car to solve. However, while Studebaker faded, the Avanti lived on to be manufactured for another TWO DECADES by two South Bend car dealers. This coupe looks like no other, and it happens to be designer Jason White’s favorite car design of all time. What makes it so stylish? On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Woodward Avenue Dream Cruise in Detroit, Jason explains to Craig Cole the secret that kept the Avanti and Avanti II from becoming stale over all those years.

AutoEsoterica is home to the under-appreciated and fantastical in car culture. Frontman Craig Cole is a life-long car enthusiast whose videos range from the restoration progress of his vintage Fords to design analysis and industry insights from contributors Jason White and Jim Hall.

The TTAC Creators Series tells stories and amplifies creators from all corners of the car world, including culture, dealerships, collections, modified builds and more.

A transcript, cleaned up by AI and edited by a human staffer, is below.

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Transcript:

Drawing Conclusions: The Studebaker Avanti

Craig Cole (Host): Jason, you’ve got something of a hot take, right?

Jason White (Design Expert): Yeah. There’s a car here on Old Woodward that gets something right that so many other cars get wrong.

(0:11) [Music]

(0:36) Craig Cole: This is Drawing Conclusions. I’m your host, Craig Cole, but more importantly, I’m joined by our resident design expert, Jason White. We’re here at the 30th annual Woodward Avenue Dream Cruise, in downtown Birmingham, Michigan right now. This is billed as the single largest one-day car event in the world. It attracts something like a million different spectators plus around 40,000 classic cars. If you’ve never been to this event before, put it on your bucket list. It’s absolutely fantastic. But Jason, we’re here to talk about a very special vehicle—special to you.

Jason White: Yeah, special to me. It’s my favorite car of all time. That’s a very hard list to come up with because there are so many that I do like as a designer. But if I had to pick one that I really love more than any, it would be the Studebaker Avanti. We have four beautiful examples here on Old Woodward in Birmingham, and we’re starting here with the original ’63 Avanti.

The Original Avanti: Raymond Loewy’s Masterpiece

Jason White: This is a car designed by a French expatriate, Raymond Loewy, a very famous designer who worked in all kinds of different design. It’s better to call him an industrial designer. He designed locomotives, logos for a lot of corporations, and automobiles.

Craig Cole: So, “car designer” does not do him justice.

Jason White: No, no. He did a lot more than just car design, but as far as cars go, this is probably his most famous design.

Craig Cole: What makes it your favorite design? It’s certainly an attractive car.

Jason White: It’s an attractive car. The thing that makes it my favorite more than anything is that it’s completely unique. You can look at a lot of cars and say to yourself, “Okay, this is cribbing from this one a little bit.” I don’t think you can say that the Avanti steals or cribs from anything, really. It’s its own vehicle. It’s so unique; there’s nothing like it before or since. You can drive this car down the road, and it’ll still get looks from people because it’s so unique all this time after. This is a ’63 automobile.

The Hot Take: Defining Design by Absence

Jason White: What does the Avanti do properly that very few other cars do?

The design team for the car, when they got together, they did it in Palm Springs, California, in a rented house. Loewy assembled a team out there because they wanted to be far away from South Bend. They wanted to have a unique perspective on things.

Craig Cole: A skunkworks.

Jason White: Yeah, it was like a skunkworks. Absolutely.

One thing that Loewy definitely wanted in this vehicle: he put forth the notion that front ends date cars. That is something that happens a lot today. You have cars that have a very unique grille across sometimes the entire line of automobiles under one brand. As soon as you change that grille, you’ve now put the other ones in a situation where they look obsolete to the buyer.

Instead of doing that, Loewy wanted the car to have a very clean face.

Craig Cole: Where’s the grille? It’s just a flat panel.

Jason White: It’s a bottom breather. The air for the radiator comes in through the bottom there. The irony is that you have a car here that is defined by the fact that it has no face. You could continue with this face forever, and you wouldn’t have to replace it.

It also has a Coke bottle shape. Loewy also designed the modern glass Coke bottle, and if you look down the side of the Avanti, it’s very visible.

Construction and Production Challenges

Jason White: This is a fiberglass car, and considering it’s fiberglass, the panel fit is very good. The form execution is very, very good.

One thing they had to do in production is they had to put a flat edge along this fender because what you have here is a lap joint of two pieces of fiberglass. The original model that was designed in Palm Springs had a point. For production, they had to change it to this flat edge so that it would feasibly be able to be bonded together.

You can always tell the original by a few things:

The Studebaker crests that you find around the car.

The round headlights on the front. (Although late in the Studebaker run, they did have square bezels to end the run.)

This car was supposed to save Studebaker.

Craig Cole: How did that go? I don’t remember.

Jason White: It didn’t work. Sherwood Eggert was the guy who ran Studebaker at the time, and they were in financially bad shape. They needed a car to announce to people that Studebaker was back and alive and well. This was to be that car. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out.

After Studebaker finished their run of this car, the rights and the tools were bought by a dealer in South Bend. That is the car on the end over there, the Avanti II, which is a continuation of this car. It’s basically the same car, but with a General Motors engine and kind of a leveled-out suspension. Those were built all the way up to 1982.

Craig Cole: That’s some staying power, though.

Jason White: Yeah, and people were still interested in buying it. They got almost celebrity-level treatment because they got to pick out the color, and the car was personally delivered to them. But this is the genuine original article here, the original Avanti.

Unique Styling Details

Craig Cole: Let’s talk about a couple of the details here. You mentioned the Studebaker logos. We’ve got one here on the C-pillar on either side.

Jason White: That’s mirrored on the hood in kind of an offset fashion.

Craig Cole: So there’s some asymmetry in the front, which you don’t see too often in cars from the early ’60s. That level of asymmetry is not something you really see in cars today, frankly.

Jason White: Not often, no.

Craig Cole: What is that from a design perspective? Is that just trying to push the boundaries? Is that being playful?

Jason White: Asymmetry is something that you can do in an interior fairly easily. In an exterior, it’s harder to sell. I think the reason it works on this car is it’s kind of more of a graphic asymmetry. If you look at the front, the front end is not really asymmetrical; it’s more of a detail. That’s how I think they get away with it.

Craig Cole: This character line you mentioned as well.

Jason White: This character line definitely slims the car down, makes it look very sleek. Little details like that really are what make a car go from good to great in terms of design.

Craig Cole: If the car did not have that crease, would it look bulkier and heavier?

Jason White: It would look bulkier and heavier and not as fast, that’s for sure. And with a supercharged V8 under the hood, this car should be properly fast.

I also love the way they designed the bumper here. It doesn’t go just straight across. They’ve wrapped it around the fenders, across where the grille would be, and along to the other side. Very complicated. It looks like it’s three pieces, but there’s a lot going on as opposed to just a single stamping.

(7:26) [Music]

An Avanti Owner’s Perspective

Craig Cole: We managed to find the owner of this car. His name is Steve. Beautiful vehicle, sir.

Steve (Owner): Thank you very much.

Craig Cole: So, what is this exactly?

Steve (Owner): A ’63 Studebaker Avanti, R2 supercharged car.

Craig Cole: How long have you owned it?

Steve (Owner): I’ve had it about 32 years. I bought it from the widow of the guy that ordered it originally from the factory. In fact, his name is still on the plate inside the car.

Craig Cole: Wow. So, number two owner, then? That’s it.

Steve (Owner): Number two owner. Yeah.

Craig Cole: Fascinating. Beautiful car. All original?

Steve (Owner): All original. Yeah. Other than, of course, tires and…

Craig Cole: The consumables.

Steve (Owner): Yeah. It’s never been painted. The engine, transmission have never been out of it. It’s just the way it came.

Steve (Owner): They were a certified milestone car because they had all these standard features that were new to the industry that became standard later on.

Steve (Owner): This car has got curved side glass. You won’t find that in another American car for another two years. They’ve got disc brakes, which came off the XK. They had to go to England to get them.

Steve (Owner): Don’t forget the access to the trunk from the inside. And the built-in beauty vanity.

Craig Cole: Well, that’s for the ladies.

Steve (Owner): The idea was back in the day, when you went to a restaurant with two couples, the men would sit in the front and the women would sit in the back. When you got to the restaurant, the women had their clutch purse, right? If they took it in, they had to keep an eye on it, so they could lift this little tab here and slide their purse into the trunk, and no one sees or knows what’s going on.

Steve (Owner): It actually came standard with seat belts, and they didn’t come in until ’66, well ahead of its time. But this car hasn’t got them. That’s because the original owner, a guy in Cleveland, had them deleted because he didn’t like them. No one wanted seat belts back in the day.

Craig Cole: Safer to be thrown clear in a crash.

Steve (Owner): Well, that’s what they would say.

Choosing Between AC or Supercharging

Craig Cole: Really quick, just talk about the air conditioning and the supercharging again.

Steve (Owner): Okay. I’ll show you under the hood if you want. There’s your supercharger over there. You see the space it takes, the orange. If you wanted an AC car, they didn’t have room for it, so you’d have one or the other.

Craig Cole: So you’d have speed with the supercharger or you would stay comfortable with the air conditioning.

Steve (Owner): This car was over $5,000 in 1963. That’s not cheap. Oh, no. It was like Corvettes and more. So, if you were an executive down in Texas, you’d want to stay cool, right? Most of your southern cars are air cars. This is a northern car, and that’s why it’s got the supercharger.

Craig Cole: And the engine is a 289, I believe you said?

Steve (Owner): 289 cubic inch Studebaker engine, full-race engine. Not a 289 Windsor small-block Ford—a Studebaker. Totally different. This is a gear-driven camshaft, so the camshaft turns in reverse. They had dual-point ignition, all the trick stuff of the time, and solid lifters.

Craig Cole: So, how’s the performance today?

Steve (Owner): Good. It’s very good. For ’63, it was incredible, but it doesn’t compare to this stuff today, with 1,000 horsepower. But the factory never rated it. The hot rod magazines claimed it was around 300 horsepower.

Craig Cole: That’ll get you down the road just fine.

Steve (Owner): Yeah, because being a fiberglass body, it’s quite light. It’s got a very heavy frame on it because it’s a convertible frame. So, you’ve got lots of low weight and then the light top. It handles really well.

Craig Cole: What is your favorite aspect of your car here? Is it the performance? Is it the style?

Steve (Owner): I think it’s the style. The styling, because it’s pretty unique. It’s so different. People just come up and say, “What is it?” They’ve just never seen them.

Steve (Owner): We’ll try to stay cool and hydrated.

The Avanti II Difference

Craig Cole: Thank you very much. So, that’s the Avanti, the first gen. Let’s check out the Avanti II, then, Jason. What are the big differences?

Jason White: Well, the big difference, first of all, is that Studebaker was out of business at this point.

Craig Cole: That’s a very good point.

Jason White: What you had is two Studebaker dealers decided that they wanted to continue this car. So, they bought the rights and planned to continue on.

The main differences between this car and the Studebaker-built one are:

The suspension is slightly different. It’s a bit more of a leveled-out stance.

General Motors-sourced engines in this case because Studebaker wasn’t going to source them anymore.

You don’t see any Studebaker crests on these cars.

You have definitely square bezels on all of the Avanti IIs.

Jason White: The “Avanti II” next to the name just doesn’t do it for me; that looks very contrived. I prefer the round lenses on the originals back over here. I think they work a lot better, especially with the kind of theme that Loewy was cultivating.

These Avanti IIs were produced all the way up until 1982. There were a few other versions of the Avanti that were produced after that fact. It’s definitely not that different, really, when you look at it from the original to this.

The unfortunate things that are added to the Avanti II in some cases are this bumper guard and the luggage rack, which I do not care for. They really clutter up what is otherwise a really clean design. It’s hard to find an II that does not have this luggage rack on the back. I’ll be looking through Avanti IIs for sale, and occasionally I’ll find one where I’m like, “Ah ha!” and then I go to the back view, and I’m like…

Craig Cole: That ruins it for you.

Legacy and Conclusion

Jason White: Yeah, but beautiful. Classic design was in production for nearly 20 years.

Craig Cole: Long time. Very long run over two different manufacturers, essentially. It failed to save Studebaker, but it did have longevity after the fact, which is a really unique automotive story when you think about it.

Craig Cole: And more importantly, it found a place in your heart.

Jason White: It did. I love these cars so much. They’re classic, they’re timeless.

The other thing I love about them is their versatility. If you look at the white one we looked at earlier with the wheel covers, that works perfectly in a modern design environment—mid-century modern, in Palm Springs, California. It works in that venue, very modern design. But then if you paint it a gold color or a reddish color and put red line wheels or mag wheels on the side of it, then it has a hot rod feel to it. It can live in different automotive realms, which, frankly, is not expected. Most cars cannot do that, but the Avanti can.

Craig Cole: Well, Jason, thank you so much for giving us a detailed tour of the Avanti, and I can see why this is your favorite car. It really is beautiful.

Jason White: Thank you for the opportunity, Craig. I appreciate it.

Craig Cole: Yeah, appreciate it as well. Next up, we did another recent episode of Drawing Conclusions where we walk you through the entire car design process. Believe it or not, it’s way more involved than you might ever expect. Click right here to check that episode out now.

(15:33) Everyone’s lost it.