'53 Studillac Custom - Update 08-10

[Bernard Kron]

Another project I’ve been meaning to get to for quite some time. The AMT ’53 Studebaker kit contains some of the most tasteful and appropriate customizing parts in any of their kits. This is fortunate because Raymond Lowey’s basic design is so graceful, well integrated and original, that these Studes have often suffered badly under the customizer’s torch. I’ve always wanted to do one of these using the kit’s full custom grill pieces and customized rear bumper/tail light assembly and otherwise just clean the body up, lower it and give it a nice paint job. So here is the start of one that I hope will meet my goal of doing a restrained, tasteful full custom.

This will be a “Studillac”, a fairly common hop-up from the late 50’s, substituting the big cubic inches of the Cadillac 354 for the rather anemic factory V8. The car will be pretty slick and showy so I'm using the Revell Parts Pac Caddy and retaining a good deal of chrome on the parts. The block and heads are finished in the same white as the roof and coves to contrast with the green fender liners and firewall. I’m running the 4-carb manifold. The interior will be white tuck ‘n’ roll with bucket seats. The bodywork is done and the car is painted. Colors are Duplicolor Hampsted Green Metallic and Wimbledon White. It’s been fully shaved, including the chrome trim along the rear fender tops. The headlights have been frenched using the kit’s dome shaped competition headlight covers, which I drilled out to make frenching rings. The car is lowered 2.5 scale inches all around, using the kit supplied dropped spindles at the front and at the rear by cutting out the leaf springs from the rear axle and inserting lowering blocks. It has a subtle forward rake which complements the frenched headlights and two-tone paint nicely I think. Compare this car to virtually any 1953 U.S. production car design and you’ll get an idea of how truly radical it really was. That’s probably why it was so hard to customize successfully. The hubcaps are the original Loewy designed stock covers which to my eye are ideal for the car. I'll add Cadillac crests in the centers. Tires are Modelhaus T-193’s which are repops of 1961 vintage AMT whitewalls.

Thanx for lookin',
B.

Edited August 10, 2013 by Bernard Kron

[Gluhead]

Cool.

I've never had that kit...didn't realize it was loaded up with goodies. I'll have to keep my eye out for one.

[Chris White]

I agree, cool

[slusher]

Very nice engine.great paint and color choice.

[Dr. Cranky]

Oh I love the colors on this one, it's looking fantastic.

[GoatGuy]

I always did like the lines of the Stude, and I agree with Virgil - the colors look really good. Keep it comin'.

[PappyD340]

Very NICE paint, I like it, looks good!!

[cobraman]

Looks very nice !

[Ace-Garageguy]

Great project, Bernard. Always a fan of the Studillac concept, and your colors and approach are spot-on. Nice going.

i certainly agree with your opinion that most efforts at customizing this beautiful and iconic car are less than successful. Your 'less-is-more' build style here is definitely the way to go.

[Bernard Kron]

Thanx everyone!

Some Photoshop Phun showing the progress on this project.

Things are moving along steadily. I made a tuck and roll interior using the stock seats, adding rectangular bolsters and utilizing the kit pleats. The dashboard is stock with chrome and body color details. The steering wheel is from an AMT ’29 Ford roadster kit. I completed the sunken and frenched headlights, using the Lucas custom headlights from the kit set inside the fenders with the headlight tunnels finished in chrome. The motor is completed and installed in the chassis. Still left to do is fabricating a dual exhaust system and foiling the window area. Then final assembly. I’m undecided on whether to install lakes pipes. The simplicity and purity of the basic design says NO! Period correct customizing practice says YES! I’ll decide once the custom grille and rear bumper are installed. Below are the detail pics from the montage.

Thanx for lookin’,
B.

[jaymcminn]

Bernard, when I did my custom Stude several years back, I wrestled with the decision to do the lakes pipes... I eventually decided "for". Here's the result...

Fantastic work on yours... the Leowy Coupe is a beautiful design, and subtle touches really make it come to life!

[Bernard Kron]

Very nice.full custom, Jay. With the radical revisions you made the lakes pipes make total sense. I especially like the "coveless" side development with the accent line resolved at the rear wheel opening, the reshaped front wheel opening to echo it, and the extension of the hood line down to the small lower grill opening. Pretty ambitious stuff, and it works a treat, too. I took the time to explore your Photobucket and I especially like the interior treatment of the this "Napolitano" Stude. The whole thing has that 50's cool and with the little side markers it looks less like a "kustom" and more like a true customized personal car from the period. Bravo!

BTW, that's a pretty famous name you've got there (at least to us design aficionados...).

Edited July 26, 2013 by Bernard Kron

[Bernard Kron]

I’ve just about got things wrapped up. Here are some final build pics and some comments about this kit and my approach to this classic design.

The Revell Parts Pac Cadillac engine is an excellent fit, even down to utilizing the stock engine mounts. Even the Revell custom headers clear the chassis rails properly and line up well for a credible exhaust system. The only adjustment required was to mill away some of the inside of the hood to clear the front carbs:

The kit only supplies one muffler and a single pipe exhaust system. Because of the striking purity of the original Raymond Loewy design I decided against the lakes pipes I had been considering. But with a hopped-up Caddy under the hood a single exhaust system would have been wrong, wrong, wrong! So a dual exhaust system had to be fabricated and installed. I used a second muffler from another ’53 Stude kit and solder for the exhaust pipes with aluminum tubing for the tips. Here’s the resulting undercarriage:

And lastly, the custom front and rear brightwork has been installed and the chassis glued into position.

The front end looks like it’s straight out of the old Off the Sketchpad pages of Rod & Custom. The only change I made was to use the stock upper trim instead of the Custom ones, The reason was the Custom one was designed to match the lower halves exactly, creating the impression of a large, continuous opening. It just looked too big to me. The stock pieces with their thin chrome spears and turn signals in the corner served to define the upper half and lighten up the front end a bit:

The kit’s Custom rear bumper and taillight combination is incredibly simple and a perfect compliment to the rest of the design. It’s so “pure” that I’ll probably forgo a license plate entirely, something I have never done on a street drivable car. The only other accent was to include a pair of polished aluminum exhaust tips, to make a performance statement.

This is an excellent kit. A couple of things require comment.

First off is how well the Customizing parts suit the basic Loewy design. None of that leaded-on baroque complexity of the Styleline kits. Perhaps the design team at AMT chose a more sensitive approach because of what they were dealing with, and reserved the more exaggerated approach for the competition version with its double blower and radically chopped top. Because of these more subtle parts the resulting Custom looks almost stock, even though the changes are actually pretty extensive. My car is lowered a good 3 scale inches all the way around, and yet it looks sleek and well balanced, not slammed.

Secondly, the kit features an interesting approach to many of the working details. Wherever possible the kit designers tried to replicate the 1:1 parts in miniature. This includes things like elements of the posable steering, the engine mounts, brake drums with the wheel spindles and axle ends intact, the rear shock mounts, etc. Combined with a consistently high degree of accuracy in parts fit, it results in build experience of a very high order. Perhaps some of you model kit historians to tell me when it dates from.

So that’s pretty much it. I’ve got some detailing to do under the hood and general cleanup and polishing and she’ll be ready for her “beauty shots”.

Thanx for following along,

B.