Beschreibung
Finding this car was dream come true for me as it is in my Top 5 cars of all time, it is a 1963 Studebaker Avanti R2, LHD, Supplied new to the UK, yes, you heard that correctly, in May 1963 to a famous Automotive Family and it has remained in two familes from new to the present day, an incredible history. It has covered a believed correct 45k Miles from new, and when you see the original condition, you will have no doubt this is correct. It is in the best original colour scheme of Turquoise over Turquoise! Very 1963 Motor Show!
A brief history of one of the most interesting cars ever made! The Studebaker Avanti was a personal luxury coupe manufactured and marketed by Studebaker Corporation between June 1962 and December 1963. A halo car for the maker, it was marketed as "America's only four-passenger high-performance personal car." Described as "one of the more significant milestones of the postwar industry", the stunning Raymond Loewy-style car offered unrivaled safety and exceptional high-speed performance. The fastest production car in the world upon its introduction, a completely stock Avanti could reach over 178 mph with its supercharged 289-cubic-inch engine. In all, a it broke 29 world speed records at the Bonneville Salt Flats. Subsequent to Studebaker's discontinuation of the model, which is an amzing story in itself, a series of five owner arrangements continued manufacture and marketing of the Avanti model through until 2006!
The Avanti was developed at the direction of Studebaker president, Sherwood Egbert. "The car's design theme is the result of sketches Egbert "doodled" on a jet-plane flight west from Chicago 37 days after becoming president of Studebaker in February 1961. Designed by Raymond Loewy's team of Tom Kellogg, Bob Andrews, and John Ebstein on a 40-day crash program, the Avanti featured a radical fiberglass body mounted on a modified Studebaker Lark 109-inch convertible chassis and powered by a modified 289 Hawkengine. A Paxton supercharger was offered as an option, which our car has. In only eight days the stylists finished a clay scale model with two different sides: one a two-place sports car, the other a four-seat GT coupe. Tom Kellogg, a young California stylist hired for this project by Loewy, felt it should be a four-seat coupe. Loewy envisioned a low-slung, long-hood-short-deck semi-fastback coupe with a grilleless nose and a wasp-waisted curvature to the rear fenders, suggesting a supersonic aircraft. The Avanti's complex body shape would have been both challenging and prohibitively expensive to build in steel with Studebaker electing to mold the exterior panels in glass-reinforced plastic, outsourcing the work to Molded Fiberglass Body in Ashtabula, Ohio — the same company that built the fiberglass panels for the Chevrolet Corvette in 1953.
The Avanti featured front disc-brakes that were British Dunlop designed units, made under license by Bendix, the first American production model to offer them. It was one of the first bottom breather designs where air enters from under the front of the vehicle rather than via a conventional grille, a design feature much more common after the 1980s. The Avanti was publicly introduced on April 26, 1962, simultaneously at the New York International Automobile Show and at the Annual Shareholders' Meeting. Rodger Ward, winner of the 1962 Indianapolis 500, received a Studebaker Avanti as part of his prize package, thus becoming the first private owner of an Avanti. In December 1962 the Los Angeles Times reported: "Launching of operations at Studebaker's own fiber-glass body works to increase production of Avantis." Many production problems concerning the supplier, fit, and finish resulted in delays and cancelled orders. Egbert planned to sell 20, 000 Avantis in 1962, but could build only 1, 200. After the closure of Studebaker's factory on December 20, 1963, Competition Press reported: "Avantis will no longer be manufactured and contrary to the report that there are thousands gathering dust in South Bend warehouses, Studebaker has only five Avantis left. Dealers have about 2, 500, and 1600 have been sold since its introduction." Studebaker seriously considered re-introducing the Avanti into Studebaker showrooms in 1965/ 66 after production resumed in 1965 via Studebaker Packard dealership owners Newman & Altman. The Avanti name, tooling and plant space were sold to two South Bend, Indiana, Studebaker dealers, Nate Altman and Leo Newman, who, after falling in love with the car, resumed production of the fundamentally original model.
So it was in early 1963 when James Edwin Foden, from the famous Foden Truck Dynasty of Nantwich, Cheshire, ordered this car to be imported and Registered on the 10th May 1963. We cannot find any records of Studebaker having an official UK distribution, but are happy to be proved wrong! so perhaps it was a personal import, the car wears the attractive and valuable registration 95FLC that it has worn since new. I cannot think there would be another Avanti registered new in the UK but you never know. The Foden family kept the car as pride of place in their collection for 24 years when it was sold to a local friend of the family, a well known car and motorbike collector named Sidney Vaughan Gaskell and it remained with him for 32 years! until I managed to buy it recently.
The car has quite a lot of history, although not much from its early years, and has its original owners manuals, books and mnay old MOT's going back to the Eighties. It has been kept up to date although has been sitting for the last couple of years, we have driven the car and she starts and works exactly as she should. This car is interesting for many reasons, not least of which it being a one year only early Round Headlight car, sold new in the UK, but it was ordered with the optional Supercharger, making it a Factory R2 Model and it has the same engine charger combination to this day. This car would normally be kept as part of my personal collection, it is unrepeatable, and I love it, but I am putting it on sale nevertheless. When this sells, there is not another,
