Unable to compete at scale with the "Big Three" in Detroit, especially in the recessionary economy of the late Fifties, Studebaker decided to pivot toward the other end of the market.
The compact Lark, launched in 1959, actually shared a lot of the passenger compartment & roofline of the full-size Studebaker models, but had the front and rear overhangs shortened considerably. The wheelbase got a section taken out of it ahead of the firewall, too, shortening it to 108.5".
It was available in two basic trim levels. The Deluxe, which was the cheaper of the two, came as a two- or four-door pillared sedan or a two-door wagon. The fancier Regal could be had as a convertible, hardtop coupe, or wagon.
The trim on the cars, even the Regals, was quite restrained for a late-Fifties American car, and the Lark emphasized thriftiness.
The Alaskan Blue 1959 two-door pillared sedan in the photo would have sported a base MSRP of only $1,925, or a couple hundred bucks shy of $21,000 in today's dollars. While the glitzier models could be had with Studebaker's 259 cubic inch OHV V-8, the base Deluxe two-door sedan was only offered with the somewhat dated 169 cube flathead inline six, rated at 90 SAE gross horsepower.
While performance of the V-8 cars was reasonably peppy... the Lark's main competitor, the Rambler American, could only be had with a straight six ...the six cylinder Larks were torpid. The flathead Studebaker "Champion" inline six dated back to the 1930s, and the performance numbers reflected that.
Road & Track tested a '59 Lark Deluxe with a 3-speed manual and clocked a best 0-60 time of 21.0 seconds with a quarter mile run of 21.4 at 61 mph through the traps. A sufficiently determined driver who wasn't facing a headwind might eventually coax the thing up to a heady 80 mile per hour top speed.
People shopping at this end of the car market aren't generally looking for race cars, however, and they'd likely be more interested in the fuel mileage, which R&T recorded as ranging between 17 and 22 miles per gallon, which was quite parsimonious for the era.
Judging by the wheels and tires on this Lark, though, I doubt that the engine compartment bears much resemblance to the way it looked when it left the plant in South Bend, Indiana sixty-five years ago.
It was photographed with a Nikon D300S and 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR II zoom lens in August of 2024.
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