R1 Project Car: 1963 Studebaker Avanti
There’s something about the original Avantis that the later cars just can’t capture. The style is ever so slightly more refined; graceful; delicate – really, insert your favorite adjective here. It’s a polarizing design for sure, and many enthusiasts have never warmed up to it. In an era where we talk about how the Dodge Viper went from concept car to production with seemingly few stops in between, an original R1 Avanti like this one listed here on eBay is a terrific example of a design exercise that still looks conceptual despite being a full-fledged production model. Bids currently sit at $7,200 with no reserve.
There had to be a few jaws on the floor of the New York International Auto Show in 1962 when the Avanti was unveiled, what with its striking nose and those giant, innocent headlights, the kind of face that just follows you around the room. And even with all that grace and chrome, the Avanti still packed a powerful heart, as an R1 like this one came standard with a naturally-aspirated 289 V8. If you really wanted to mix up your ying and yang, you could even ask Studebaker to build you an Avanti with a supercharged V8 under the hood – and it remains one of the rarer muscle cars money can buy.
The seller notes this Avanti was owned by his uncle, and he enjoyed tinkering with the car over his four decades of ownership. There are some tweaks here, such as what appears to be a set of vintage Recaro seats. The seller also notes that his uncle added a stainless steel exhaust, aluminum radiator, relocated the battery to the trunk, installed front side lights added for visibility, upgraded to power windows, and even replaced the frame! I love cars like this because they’re by and large still stock, but the tweaks here and there speak to an owner who has enjoyed his time with a classic car, ultimately adding features that make it a more enjoyable car to drive.
And you really can’t make improvements like that until you spend many, many years with a car. It takes that long to understand how you can modify a vintage vehicle without marring its character. The standard R1 made about 24o horsepower, which is more than respectable in this day and age but especially for a low-volume car that didn’t have a ton of resources at its disposal, especially after Studebaker relinquished its interest in the company. Today, in naturally-aspirated form, an original Studebaker-build Avanti still seems way undervalued compared to other luxury cruisers of the era. Perhaps it’s because of the looks or general lack of brand awareness, but I personally love the Avanti R1 and hope this one gets the final bid number it deserves.
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Comments
Neat car at a fair price. But… was his uncle Gyro Gearloose? What a mess of goofy electric add-ons!
He should show some underside pics to confirm all the rusty chassis metal has been replaced. I have a feeling that there’s more work to be done to repair the hog troughs.
read the eBay ad:
“frame was replaced and is in excellent condition”.
Avanti hog troughs aren’t part of the frame. They’re separate and between the frame and the fiberglass body.
Just replacing the frame doesn’t include the suspension either. I suspect everything but the frame is severely rust pitted.
What’s all of that colored spahgetti on top of the firewall?
must be his uncle’s back yard electrical engineering degree shining through. And something for the new owner to deal with as soon as he buys it, to undo all that mess.
No full photos of the back?
Seeing one of these is always a nice thing. That car could very well have taken the crown as the first pony-car had Studebaker not been in such dire straits by then…dire enough to have sunk Packard 5 years earlier.
Sunk Packard…..geez….cry me a river…..
Love to see such a neat and tidy wiring job! I’d probably rip it all out and start over with a new loom. What is shown in the last photo – is that a rust hole in a fiberglass body?
At first I thought I saw water injection to the carb. But it is not a hose, it looks more like a wire. What am I looking at, please?
Ugly
An awful lot of non-stock stuff and I wouldn`t trust that electrical mess. It would take a lot to make this a nice car again. To the `ugly` comment–I think you never saw a really nice original Avanti.
What I really like is the harbor freight plastic trailer marker lights that he added to the front fenders. That is a clean touch. I’m going to take a wild guess and say that he didn’t have a lot of automotive electrical experience.
Harbor Freight, he working or retired fellas friend!
Well, clearly, coming from Wisconsin, I can’t throw stones, look what AMC put out. I always thought the Avanti was too far out there. Almost sad looking, as if to say, “buy me, we’re going under”. The car itself, I read, was a marvel, of sorts. Created in a 40 day crash( no pun intended) program, a radical fiberglass body on a Lark chassis, it sure seemed swoopy enough to convince top brass, but like most “flash in the pans”, failed miserably. Rather than save the company, it only added to their woes. Such a shame. The Avanti had it all for a cruiser. V8s of all kinds, interior and dash like the finest European cars. The biggest thorn? It was called a “Studebaker”, and conjured up images of old cars. I wonder what success if any, another company would have had this car?
The Studebaker and American motor sagas are remarkably similar, except American Motors got a couple of wealthy uncles to join the family instead of a boat anchor like Packard going with studebaker. Both had a few awesome cars but while studebaker’s management purposely bled off the car division because they weren’t interested in competing with the big three, American Motors simply continued to shrink and then made a horrible decision to sink their last shot into the Pacer while studebakers Avanti would have been a huge seller if not crippled by supplier problems with many deposits already taken on the car having to be returned.
As I remember the failure of Avanti was the inability of Studebaker to produce the cars. Studebaker got all kinds of press with their performance achievements of the Avanti at Bonneville and elsewhere. Unfortunately, they couldn’t deliver the cars. People weren’t willing to wait, when they could buy a Buick Riviera or Corvette Sting Ray off a dealer’s lot.
The museum I worked for had the VIN 1 and supposedly the last VIN original series car, both unrestored. Management saw no value in them and planned to auction them off for a pittance. Some of us staff finally convinced them to restore #1 but the other was disposed of.