Studebaker Avanti R3 1964
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Car producer : |
Studebaker |
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Model: |
Avanti R3 1964 |
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Year: |
1962-1963 |
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Type: |
Coupe |
The Studebaker Avanti is a personal luxury coupe manufactured and marketed by Studebaker Corporation between June 1962 and December 1963. The automaker marketed the Avanti as "America's only four-passenger high-performance personal car."
Described as "one of the more significant milestones of the postwar industry", the car offered combined safety and high-speed performance. The Avanti broke 29 records at the Bonneville Salt Flats.
Subsequent to Studebaker's discontinuation of the model, a series of five owner arrangements continued manufacture and marketing of the Avanti model.
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 Daytona 109-inch convertible chassis and powered by a modified 289 Hawk engine.
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 (fiberglass), 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. 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. A Paxton supercharger was offered as an option.
The Avanti was publicly introduced on April 26, 1962.
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, Studebaker has only five Avantis left. Dealers have about 2,500, and 1600 have been sold since its introduction.
