Welcome back.  In this second issue of the AOAI E-Newsletter, I will set the stage for a multi-part exploration into the use and preservation of classic cars, specifically the Avanti.  The roles of the hobbyist and the historian in the collector car community will also be addressed from the perspective of my personal experiences with my own cars.  These experiences have colored my opinions on this subject, as have the cars and stories from countless other enthusiasts.  I doubt that all of my ideas will be met full-fledged, and while I do not intend to offend or dismay, I do hope that this article and its successors provoke some thought amongst those who read it, perhaps leading to a greater discussion within the Avanti Studebaker communities. 

As always, enjoy.

Peter Miller, 63R-4810

At the age of nineteen I acquired my first Studebaker, a 1962 Lark Regal.  Matching numbers.  No rust.  Two doors.  Beige on taupe.  Six-banger.  Three on the tree.  This was your Plain Jane, ‘twiddle your thumbs and wait for 40mph to register on the speedo’ sort of classic car, and it looked and performed in much the same way as it did fifty years ago.  But with a good deal of help from my father, it morphed into Mr. Hyde: three years, one Studebaker JTS block, and a Paxton blower later, that beige shoebox was pushing a few hundred horsepower through a close-ratio four-speed and a twin-traction Dana 44 rear end.  No longer could I set my can of Coca Cola in one of those glove box cup holders and expect it to stay put once I let my foot off of the third pedal.  That grocery-getter put a smile on the face of everyone who road in it or saw it with the hood propped open, but for me, some things are just too uncivilized for city driving.  So when the opportunity arose to swap my Lark for a ‘63 R1 Avanti, suffice it to say that I lost little sleep in making my decision.

With the Lark slated for shipment to the East Coast, I took delivery of 63R-4810 from a gentleman in Sebastopol, California.  Aside from the replacement of the original three-speed manual with a Borg Warner T-10 early in life, as well as a repaint and new headliner within the last few years, 4810 appears to be a fairly original, well-preserved machine.  Although after 157k miles the engine is just eeking past its break-in mileage and beginning to tire, the driver’s seat has tears, and a small leak in the heater core has ruined a section of the carpet in the passenger-side foot well, I instead assumed a preservationist approach toward this car.  Rather than undertaking significant mechanical or cosmetic changes, as I had done with the Lark, my work on it has been confined to replacing the axles seals, rebuilding brakes, setting valve lash, and other forms of general maintenance.

I will get back to the relevance of these examples shortly, but first I will offer some other relevant concepts.  As I concluded in the last issue of this Newsletter, a car collector is but the caretaker of an automobile, the curator of his own museum of rolling art to be preserved for the next generation.  To this I would add that all cars are part of automotive history, from the original Voisin Laboratoire to a big-block fiberglass recreation of a ’57 Bel Air or a brand new Toyota Prius.  But certainly the lenses through which one views a famous one-off Grand Prix racer, a no-name garage-built replica, or a mass-produced modern hybrid all stand in marked contrast to one another, and this no doubt should influence how each is used and preserved.  Reason relegates the Voisin to a museum, the Chevy to the dragstrip, and the Prius to public roads and then a landfill once its batteries surpass their useful lifetime.  Yet men are not always rational: that Voison is still raced at historic events throughout the world, the Chevy was built at considerable cost by a father and son who coddle their creation and trailer it to car shows, and the Prius owner is begging Toyota to offer replacement batteries so he can keep his beloved gas-sipping hybrid.

These three examples exist at extremes, and as such the actions of the cars’ owners are easily discernible as either reasoned or impassioned.  But the Avanti does not lie at the fringe of automotive and historical significance; it thus becomes far more difficult to determine how even a particular Avanti should be treated, much less the marque as a whole.  While lacking the perceived importance of, for example, a Delage, a Talbot-Lago, or an early Shelby, Avanti is still unique and important in its own right, boasting a degree of rarity and racing provenance that necessitates the preservation of its history. 

But what is preservation?  Is this updating a car to ensure its safety and performance on modern roads and in modern traffic, restoring it to original factory specifications or with subtle modern improvements, maintaining it for occasional use, or tucking it away as-is in a climate-controlled warehouse?  Is it returning a record-setting Avanti to Bonneville for another race?  And which is the roll played by the historian, which by the hobbyist, and how do these approaches differ?

This leads me back to where I began: my 1962 Studebaker Lark.  By the time its transformation was completed, the car retained all of its original sheetmetal, much of its original paint and interior, and the original chassis; however the drivetrain, suspension and brakes were all pieced together from other Studebakers of various models and years.  An all-original car thus became a “bitsa.”  As a ’62, it cannot be deemed a recreation of an R2-powered Lark, as none were made that year.  But such a recreation, I may add, seems a worthy endeavor: the scarcity of matching-number and original R2 Larks suggests to me that they should not be driven, much less raced, and instead set in a museum for the world to see hundreds of years from now; they should be preserved as a piece of American and automotive history, a “look what was made in American just a few decades ago,” and “look what little company in South Bend, Indiana beat the Big Three in the race for the first American Muscle Car.”  A few thousand dollars to build a recreation R2 Lark seems a small price to pay for the peace of mind in knowing that when I throw a rod halfway down the dragstrip, I have not destroyed a rare engine in an even rarer car. 

But I digress: by the end, my Lark became just another hot rod.  Was this the wrong thing to do to this car?  Perhaps it was, or maybe it is only one of thousands of such grocery-getters that the world will not miss, and in its current state it will instead draw the attention of onlookers young and old, inspiring a respect and interest in classic cars that preserves the hobby far into the future.  Such illusions of grandeur, however, belie that fact that while the car appears, at least to me, as far more interesting and enjoyable now than it ever was, it will never be original again.  But I will leave this question for the reader: did the world lose something when this Lark became a bitsa? 

Now, how would the reader feel if the same approach were taken with my Avanti?  Considering its status as a relatively original car, is it reasonable to replace its standard differential with a Twin Traction unit, or rebuild its engine and add a supercharger, all the while expecting no change to its originality?  Or does even its contemporary transmission upgrade relegate it to the category of bitsa?  I would argue that, at least for the Avanti, an original body, chassis, and engine block are a good foundation in establishing authenticity of the car in question; contemporary – not just period-correct – modifications such as a factory replacement for a blown engine may also be acceptable under certain circumstances.  But apart from authenticity, originality concerns the quality of the car as a whole in representing its as-delivered condition when presented to its first owner or driver.  The patina, the road grime from years of use, the clock that no longer ticks – none of these detract from significance of the automobile, but rather stand as details in the car’s storied past.

Today there is increasing weight placed on originality of classic automobiles.  Pebble Beach and many other concourse events now offer a ‘Preservationist Class’ in which the originality of prized automobiles is held in higher regard than cosmetic or even functional perfection.  Very original and exclusive machines such as pre-war Bentleys, Vauxhalls, and Alfas, are thus becoming even more desirable than their perfectly-restored brethren, but why?   A car is original only once, and as soon as its body is stripped of original paint, its factory interior disassembled to make room for new fabrics, or its contemporary coachwork modified at the whim of a new and careless owner, parts of its history begin to disappear.  For classic firearms, fine art, and antique furniture, once a piece is refinished or touched up, its historical – and therefore monetary – value diminish greatly.  There have always existed individuals in the collector car world who applied the same ideology to automobiles, but one must consider how deeply this ideal will permeate the hobby in the short and long term.

This calls to mind one particular and very special car: the blue on silver1970 Porsche 917K, No. 23 Martini car.  This is the most original 917K extant, its bodywork still sporting the dings, dents, and bruises of an extensive racing history.  In fact, each scrape in the bodywork, the glue runs from the replacement windscreen, and the wear marks in the balsa shifter know after tens of thousands of shifts, has a documented story associated with it; this only adds to the mystique of the machine and guarantees its impact on observers.  Never restored, its charm and charisma are unlike any other 917 I have ever seen, and it remains today a true time capsule of a bygone era of no-holds-barred road racing.  To dismantle it, to change it, to risk damage to it would be considered a crime by all who have viewed it.  As such, it is retired and no longer sees time on a race track; there exist plenty of other restored 917Ks to wow the public with their air-cooled flat twelves and violent horsepower.

But what does this mean for the Avanti owner or the Studebaker enthusiast? Frankly, this is not something we are quite ready to answer; other facts and opinion addressed in the next issue will color this conclusion.  Suffice it to say, however, that I recognize the relevance of hot rods, recreations, restored vehicles, and original pieces in the collector car world.  A time and place exists for each of them, and car collecting would be incomplete without examples of each.  That said, the Avanti community must continue to embrace the preservation of certain cars and improve its documentation on originality for the sake of future Avanti owners.  Finally, the use and preservation of each Avanti should be considered against a metric of provenance, originality, and rarity; each of which I will address in further detail next month.