5. Studebaker Avanti
As one of the USA's oldest vehicle manufacturers (building its first horse-drawn carriage in 1852), Studebaker was also one America’s most known and trusted vehicle producers. After catching all of its ‘Big Three’ Detroit-based rivals napping immediately post-war with a state-of-the-art all-new range of Raymond Loewy-designed passenger cars, Studebaker rested on its laurels for too long and was soon struggling to retain its early post-war competitive advantage by late 1950s. Despite its acquisition of the once-mighty Packard, its sales continued to decline, and by the arrival of the early 1960s, this admired South Bend maker was struggling for survival. Its solution to attract new business to its showrooms was a bold but risky and (ultimately) foolhardy one: a brand new personal coupe, a stylish 2+2 for a niche market that would win much acclaim and many admiring glances, but was unlikely to reverse the Company’s declining fortunes.
It was designed and turned around in record time by Studebaker’s preferred stylist, renowned industrial designer and author of the famous Coca Cola glass bottle and Greyhound bus, Raymond Lowey. The new Avanti wowed everyone with its 1962 debut, but its complex-to-make fibreglass coachwork and powerful new supercharged engines caused long production delays, with the first customer-ready examples not being delivered until 1963, despite demand out-stripping supply. This hurt Studebaker’s finances, and with on-going production issues, by 1964 the advanced and promising Avanti was history. Studebaker struggled on for a further two years before the old established firm closed down its historic South Bend plant, relocated to Canada, and then sadly closed its doors for good in 1966. The Avanti happily lived on in a another form though as the revised Avanti II, with one of Studebaker’s largest ex-dealers acquiring the rights to produce and sell this niche product (in the famous old South Bend factory). This smart coupe defied the odds and lived into the 1990s, being built in small numbers, ironically making the Avanti the longest-unbroken-chain lived of all the 1962 debutants featured here.