Tag Archives: studebaker

The New Avanti Estate Wagon

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avanti_estate_wagon

avanti_golfI finished rendering my Avanti Wagon and entered it into the Studebaker Design Museum show. I haven’t done much 3D before but Google SketchUp was really simple to use. It didn’t give me everything I wanted though, so I ended doing some vector drawing on top of the model to get it to look right. Not quite as cool as Top Gear’s Porsche Shooting Brake but I’m happy with how it all turned out.

I wrote some marketing copy and created two ads for the 2-door Avanti Estate. The ads were loosely based on these illustrations posted on theavanti.com. I love the rough, vignetted edges on those marker drawings and the colorful rendering given to the backgrounds.

The ads are available as PDF files by clicking the small images, or here and here.

avanti_speedI’m ashamed to confess my previous ignorance of the Avanti’s designer, Raymond Loewy. He was THE industrial designer of the mid-20th century. In addition to designing for Studebaker, he designed buses for Greyhound, logos for Nabisco, Shell and Exxon, and even the iconic bottles that distinguished Coca-Cola from other sodas through the end of the last century. His design for the exterior of Air Force One is still in use today.

While I was working on the renderings I discovered thatAvanti Motors still exists and creates a limited run of new cars out of Mexico and Canada. I don’t think they’re planning a wagon though.

CORRECTION: A reader informed me that Avanti ceased production in 2006. An interesting note from Wikipedia:

Michael Eugene Kelly, owner of Avanti Motors Corporation, was arrested by the FBI on Dec 22, 2006 in Florida. Kelly is suspected of running a $400 million Ponzi scheme from 1992–2004 and is in jail without bail facing mail fraud charges.

Studebaker Wagonaire

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studewagonaire63

This almost-a-convertible-not-quite-an-El-Camino wagon was created by Studebaker on the Lark station wagon body. The retractable roof was built into the rear to allow tall cargo to be transported upright. From the ad above, I assume this meant your fishing poles, or your daughter, but I’m sure there were other ways to get them into a converntional wagon.

Any owner of a 240 with a sunroof can guess what problems arose from the Wagonaire’s retractable roof; it leaked like a sieve. Although Studebaker fixed this problem in later years, the model was doomed to a production run of 3 years and open air rear styling for wagons never caught on.

Studebaker Scotsman

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1958-studebaker-scotsman-wagon

I had never heard of the stereotype of Scotsmen being frugal and cheap until I saw this post on Sociological Images. It was well known enough in the 1950s, however, that Studebaker made a line of vehicles under the “Scotsman” name. This included the station wagon pictured above.

According to info on Wikipedia, the Scotsman was Studebaker’s attempt to position itself as the maker of inexpensive, bare-bones cars, in contrast to the Big Three automakers miles of chrome, fins and gimmicks. Base price for a 2 door was the patriotic $1776, but it could be had for less than that if the buyer opted for painted bumpers and wheels instead of chrome.

The interior had no carpeting, just rubber mats on top of steel. Gray vinyl seats and painted cardboard trim (!) were the only interior options and rear passengers were unable to open their windows. Accessories were limited, and dealers were instructed to steer buyers looking for frills to upgrade to the Champion line.

Studebaker managed to deliver a reported 30 MPG from the inline six, making it one of the most economical cars of its size. With 0-60 times of around 20 seconds, it was also one of the slowest.