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.

 

[Jimi]

Radical aerodynamic fiberglass body, Paxton supercharger boost, and 289-hp R2 V8 high-speed performance.
The 1963 Studebaker Avanti R2 Coupe stands as one of the most daring, futuristic designs ever to roll out of Detroit. Conceived under the direction of Studebaker president Sherwood Egbert and penned by a legendary team including Raymond Loewy, the Avanti broke every traditional styling rule with its radical wedge profile, bottom-breathing front grille, wraparound aircraft-inspired cockpit, and lightweight fiberglass body devoid of standard chrome trim.
Beneath that low-slung hood lived the high-performance R2 package: a modified 289-cubic-inch V8 force-fed by a Paxton centrifugal supercharger that squeezed out an incredible 289 horsepower—achieving the magical factory milestone of one horsepower per cubic inch. Paired with front disc brakes (a rarity for American production cars at the time) and a 4-speed manual floor shifter, the Avanti shattered multiple stock speed records at Bonneville Salt Flats.