Good Old Times

[Jimi]

 

[Jimi]

 

[Jimi]

 

[Jimi]

 

[Jimi]

 

[Jimi]

 

[Jimi]

By 1962 the historic Studebaker plant in South Bend was hemorrhaging cash and hurtling toward bankruptcy. Instead of cutting corners to survive, desperate executives made one final, breathtaking swing at automotive greatness. They tasked design icon Raymond Loewy to shape a fiberglass halo car, which his team famously sketched inside a rented Palm Springs house in forty days.
The resulting Avanti was unlike anything on American roads. It abandoned traditional grilles for bottom breathing aerodynamics, while the interior took heavy cues from jet aircraft with roof mounted switches and an integrated roll bar.
Beneath the fiberglass skin sat a supercharged 289 V8 tuned by racing legend Andy Granatelli. He unleashed the coupe across the Bonneville Salt Flats, shattering twenty nine speed records and blasting past one hundred seventy miles per hour. For a brief moment, a dying automaker officially owned the fastest production car in America before plant closures extinguished the dream forever.