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as you can see from the production order further up in the feed the car's destination was Milan, Italy. So, i would assume that it was really delivered to Italy, but I have no idea what happened then until it was registered in 1966/67. Some people proposed it could have been used for a film set, but I have no indication for this. Maybe the orginial buyer just stepped back and it took time to find a new buyer as the company was going out of business back then ...

Yes.. exactly… probably about 22… and I will never forget that deep air sound! But the sound a wound up Paxton makes on my Avanti has much more of an ‘angry’ sound.. at least to my old ears!!

Or the car was not import to Milan by the buyer's order. The distributor (Compagnia Generale Auto) has ordered two cars and the sale of the grey one has taken time.

When younger I rebuilt models and spent long hours making them the way i wanted. You did a LOT of work, well beyond my talents and I like your finished car. great job.

Man your going to make a totally new car out of that thing. Another excellent write up and finished job.

You did a great job on the addition of the spoiler. Thanks for showing us your work.

Thanks!

thanks for the info, Leo! - The first one, 4641 in grey is mine. 🙂 However, the car was delivered in 1963, but was then only registered in Milano by the first owner in 1966/67. It would be interesting to know why the car was not used for three years at the beginning. Could that maybe be connected to Studebakers going out of business?

At Mustang Week Texas just a few weeks ago, we won an award for our 2006 Avanti being there. The event also gave me the opportunity to see a lot of different options for the back of our car. The Avanti trunk and rear fenders are completely unique when compared to the same year Mustang but the ideas you can get from seeing all the custom designs were incredible. I now knew that I wanted to add a rear spoiler to the car and this would be #1 of 2 changes that I’m going to make to the back of the car. I also knew of the complexity of making a 1 off piece, so I wanted to find a premade fiberglass spoiler that I could modify to work with the multi curved trunk. I bought and returned a couple spoilers that just wouldn’t work. After returning the last one, we had a chance to go to a large monthly car show in the Austin area. As I looked at the back of many different model sports cars, I noticed one that had a back end which was about as flat as our car. The other thing that I noticed was that some of those cars had flat top mount spoilers, edge mounted flip up spoilers and pedestal mount spoilers. Flat and edge mount were out due to the arch at the top edge of the Avanti trunk, but the pedestal mount was promising. I took my iPhone tape measure app and measured our car and the car that looked like it might work and holy cow, the width was within 1/2” of each other. After eyeballing the fender angles and spoiler design, I knew I had the car. 2016-2023 Dodge Challenger! The next day, I located an aftermarket factory design Fiberglass spoiler that was primed and ready to paint, so I ordered it. Once arrived, it was time to decide where to mount it and how much modification it needed in order for it to mount correctly to the Avanti trunk. I basically had to add 1/8” to 1/4" of fiberglass to the edges of the mount of the spoiler so it matched the curvature of the trunk and so that the edge of the side of the spoiler was gapped to the fender correctly. Here it is:

In the continuation of customizing our 2006 Avanti, I knew that the front-end design would look good with a front spoiler. Since the car was only made for 2 years, I also knew there wasn’t going to be any already made to purchase, so it was time to make one. It was important to keep the design classic and reserved, yet functional. The lower fog lights provided an excellent location to place the edge of the spoiler so it looked factory. The spoiler would mount to the top of the lower valence piece with 5 bolts and the edges would mount to the Fog Light area so there wouldn’t be any chance of vibration. Here’s how I did it:

Maybe I was just more impressionable at twenty years old but it sticks like glue in my memory. I’ll bet you were in your younger years when that tri power GTO made its mark in your memory?

As I continue my customization of our 2006 Avanti, I thought to myself one day that if Avanti Motors could take a 2006 Mustang GT and convert it into an Avanti, then could I do it with a RC Car? And I didn’t want to do the standard 1/18-1/24 scale car, I wanted a larger one. So I started my search and eventually found an original, new in the box, 2006 Mustang GT toy grade 1/10 scale car. The plastic body on these were much thicker than today’s Lexan, so I figured it would be an easier car to work with. At 27” long, it’s pretty impressive too. The seller of the car was a collector who had it for years and was selling off his toy collections, so I was just lucky in my search. The only 2 negatives that come with an old toy grade car is the cheap electronics and thin brittle chassis plastic in parts of the chassis areas. So, I upgraded the electronics and added some pieces of 3/16” black plexiglass that I had laying around, to beef up the chassis while making a battery box, etc. It took about 3 months of off and on evening work to pull this off. Check out the build…

Kind of surprised your R4 didn’t ‘trumpet’ better than the R1…. but perhaps the 305 inch R4 was a bit ‘gagged’ with those two big Carters! Speaking of carb “symphonics”, to my memory the best I’ve heard was a friend’s ‘65 GTO with it’s 389 and triple carbs… The only word I can think of to describe the sound those opened up ‘trips’ made is … AWESOME!!!

I’ve driven Studes with all the different R engines and the one that sticks with me as the best sounding from the driver’s seat is actually the R1. The reason could be that my first hippo Stude was a 63 R1 4 spd which I flogged relentlessly. The exhaust was running through silent mufflers and was a good sound but the induction noise when the secondaries of the afb opening was shear symphonic. It just made me want to run it to 6200 rpm and power shift to the next gear which I did often. The only improvement to the induction noise would be four two barrel Webers.

Let's use very quiet mufflers on all the engines so that we can single out the engine noises. Then, one engine noise to consider is the sound of the pistons swapping holes in the R3 & R4 engines. By that I mean the piston slap that one can hear with "quiet"mufflers and a nearby building to reflect the sound back to the driver when driving relatively slowly. Under WOT that piston slap would be in the mix of all the other engine noises. Also, aren't the valve clearances greater for R3 & R4 than for R1 & R2? If so, then the R3 & R4 would have a bit more lifter clatter. I'm not trying to provide the answer here; just adding up some of the component noises. BTW, ALL Studebaker engines (excepting the 56J) have solid lifters. --Dwight

Thanks. These knobs are actually for the seat releases.

A dual carbed engine does make some incredible sucking sounds although they're still very different from air being squeezed sounds. I don't know, R2 vs. R3. Blower noise is blower noise and the actual supercharging device sits in the same location. That's where the air is getting the squish. And then it would be a question of how much each supercharger is squishing what quantity of air over how much duration? The stories Ron and Doug Crall have regarding driving 1025 in the 1970s, "winding her out to the R" [in thousand R P M at bottom of the 6k tachometer] it made some glorious noises spun that tight, both induction and exhaust. That particular Paxton was a competition model which possibly brings in other factors. It also had loud tone mufflers initially, then Ron replaced those with glasspack style mufflers except they did have one baffle. These were the ones I knew driving it in the 1990s. I also only max spun it a skoosh over 5000 RPM; I pretty much only drove the car in its torque curve [R < 5252 RPM]. A modded-dupe is what I'd call it. I want to build a modded-dupe of RS1021 in 63R-1025.

Two to Austria: 63R-3216 Ernst Riesch And Co. Vienna Austria Gold R-3465 Ernst Riesch And Co. Vienna Austria White

Sorry I was wrong on above post. Here is a picture of spring in position. Longest arm on spring is in the right spot on your carb and will attach correctly to the choke lever. Dan

I’ll toss in my two cents….. In my opinion the answer may be the 1963 Avanti R2…. Reason being, from my own experience, the scream coming from the supercharger is LOUD at anything above 3500 RPM… (the factory air filter setup is basically unsilenced) Although the R3 Avanti is more powerful, it’s supercharger’s air filter is located in front of the radiator, which would quiet the supercharger noise compared to the R2 under hood setup. As far as the R4’s engine song, I’ve ridden in a 425 horse 409 Chev (dual carbs) and although the two carbs, when opened up, were very loud, (sounded great in car!) I don’t think the sound was as ‘strong’ as a wound up Paxton.

Having recently installed a SBC in my 63 I have contended with the heighth issue, I have the Edlebrock performer intake and Edlebrock carb, air cleaner base with recessed center that fits over carb. The trick for me was to go from a 3 inch aircleaner element to a 2 inch. There is no doubt that the SBC sits taller than the Stude 289 in the engine bay.

Three exported to Italy from the factory 🙂 Compagnia Generale Auto, Milan. 4641 Gray Compagnia Generale Auto. Milan 4643 White Renato Bornigia. Rome 3141 Gold

You should be able to find them on eBay. The seats were common with several German cars in the 80's and I found several parts that I needed for my 82 seats a year ago. There may be a part or ID # on your old part if you still have them that might help too.

Hope you can open Dropbox https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/zbgmt215j7hkk6of65nct/carter-afb-emanual.pdf?rlkey=6vztsvrfr2pd9xomt3se7ejmm&dl=0 The Carter AFB Manual shows the spring. page 40/79 etc ...