23 replies to this topic

[Haubenschild]

[martinfan5]

Its a photo of a car parked behind another car on the street , I think I know it, but I can place it

[bbowser]

Looks like the rear of an Avanti to me?

[george 53]

The wagon looks like a Mercedes, the coupe is an Avanti.(Origenally made by Studebaker! YEAH, STUDEBAKER!!! Nice, isn't it???)

[Casey]

Looks like Liam's selected his next project.

http://www.round2mod...vanti/amt780-01

[rmvw guy]

Wanted to say Avanti by Studebaker and someone beat me to it. Want to say 1965? Anyway, I always thought it was a car ahead of it's time. As for the
Mercedes, it's a car for today if you have very deep pockets.

[Haubenschild]

Ahhh , The topic title was too general , and thanks for the response , I was wondering what that thing was! I saw the mag 500's , but I didnt know if it was an import or a domestic vehicle

[gray07]

They were made a few miles from my house

[SSNJim]

There were several models of the Avanti kitted, mostly by AMT, if you have any thoughts of building it....

[G Holding]

This was much harder to find

[george 53]

And MUCH more expensive!!!!!

[62rebel]

Aurora made one with opening doors as well; VERY rare kit and VERY fiddly. i have a couple of unfinished ones in the stash. the history of Studebaker makes for a pretty good read. some of the fastest production cars of the time came from Studebaker.

[Haubenschild]

http://testdrivejunk...nti-test-drive/

[gray07]

They have a studebaker museum in southbend indiana, they have a website

[Ace-Garageguy]

The Avanti body tooling (it was fiberglass) and design rights went through several hands, and the car was produced by several companies after Studebaker's demise. Some versions were equipped with small-block Chevy engines. The last incarnation of the Avanti II was being produced in very limited numbers not far from my home in Georgia as late as 2007. The company went under, and I haven't followed developments since.

Raymond Loewy, a very sucessful and well known industrial designer (he did much beautiful work, from steam locomotives to pencil sharpeners) is widely credited with the design of the Avanti, as well as the other groundbreaking Studebaker, the 1953-4 Starlight / Starliner.

There have been several slippery Avantis built for Bonneville, which makes an interesting basis for a model. There were also some Stude-built supercharged cars.

The AMT kit has opening doors, and some elements of the interior are somewhat under-scaled.

[disabled modeler]

Its a Stude Avanti a local guy has one just like it here...same color.

[Jantrix]

Great info Bill. Stude produced them for the '63 & '64 model years. Headlights tell you which year one is, '63 they were round, '64 they were square. From the factory they came with 289 V8 with optional Paxton supercharger. The first production car with all disc brakes. My dad says they were a hairy little beast.

Edited by Jantrix, 18 July 2012 - 04:28 PM.

[TooOld]

Here's the different headlight housings .

[Ace-Garageguy]

More good info, Rob and Bob.. I personally prefer the square eyed cars. The AMT kit has both versions, by the way. Interesting aside is that a lot of guys seem to think the 289 engine was a Ford, because of the similar displacement. It was in fact all Studebaker, though the auto-trans was Borg Warner and had a lot in common with the Ford O Matic, other than the shift sequence. I'm pretty sure the factory top-line supercharged cars were referred to as R-3, and they didn't make many. The car was built on a modified Lark convertible chassis (X-braced to add rigidity to the 'glass body), which was itself a modified (shortened) '53 design, so the underpinnings were a little dated. The Bendix disc brakes were a first for American production cars, but several European makes had had discs for a while.

Another interesting thing here is that if you want to do a full-detail Lark from the old Johan kit, the AMT Avanti chassis makes a good donor.

Man, this has me wanting to add a couple of Studebakers to my to-do list,

[outragis]

Avanti, but we already knew that!