Eventually one of everything will drive by the corner of College Avenue and 54th Street. In this case, it's a late Forties Studebaker coupe. Specifically, it's a 1947 Studebaker Commander DeLuxe 3 Passenger Coupe, what other manufacturers referred to as a "business coupe".
3 Passenger Coupes had a bench seat in the front and no back seat, just a cargo area. They were popular with traveling salesmen (hence the name), doctors, retired couples on a budget, and other folks who just didn't see much need to haul passengers. They mostly went away in the mid Fifties with the end of the era of the traveling salesman and the rise of air travel.
The 1947 Studebakers were some of the first all-new postwar car designs to hit showrooms, and their lines, largely owed to Virgil Exner, are still distinctive.
Riding on a 112 inch wheelbase, the '47 Champion 3 Passenger Coupe was relatively light by the standards of American cars, weighing in at only 2770 pounds. Power was provided by Studebaker's 170 cubic inch flathead inline six, rated at 80 SAE gross horsepower with a 1-barrel Carter carb and available 3-speed or 4-speed (with overdrive!) manual gearboxes.
This super-clean Velvet Black example is certainly noticeable when surrounded by modern traffic; I photographed it with a Nikon 1 V2 and 1 Nikkor 18.5mm f/1.8 lens.
I'm getting increasingly fascinated by the early postwar pontoon-fender styling, before the rolling Wurlitzer chrome excesses of the Fifties and their subsequent bat-winged tail-finned successors. It wasn't until the "fuselage" styling of the late Sixties that Detroit cars would again have such clean lines.
It's hard to wrap my head around the fact that this car was probably about 39 years old when I graduated high school, and that, relatively speaking, that's how old a 1985 Plymouth Reliant would be to a member of the Class of 2024. (In an eerie parallel, Studebaker had been defunct nineteen years at the time, and Plymouth was shuttered in 2001...)
It's hard to wrap my head around the fact that this car was probably about 39 years old when I graduated high school, and that, relatively speaking, that's how old a 1985 Plymouth Reliant would be to a member of the Class of 2024. (In an eerie parallel, Studebaker had been defunct nineteen years at the time, and Plymouth was shuttered in 2001...)
An 85 Reliant would drive like a modern car to me now, but that 47 Stude would not have to me then. I wonder if someone from the Class of 2024 would find the Reliant to feel primitive to drive. I know they'd find it primitive to experience otherwise, with no screen and CarPlay.
ReplyDeleteApparently using mirrors to back up is very tricky if you've had a backup camera from your first time behind the wheel.
DeleteOf course, I'd probably find adjusting the mixture and spark advance on the fly to be very confusing, too. (I've also driven some non-synchromesh manual gearboxes, but it's not something I'd want to do every day.)
I've had a backup camera only since October, and when I drove a car without one recently I really had to work to call up my turn-around-and-look skills. Yay hedonic adaption.
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