1959 Studebaker Lark

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.

1947 Studebaker Commander DeLuxe

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...)