square or rounded

[CASSIUS]

To cut a long story short I've bought two mont ago an imported Avanti for several reasons:

[CASSIUS]

To cut a long story short I've bought two month ago an imported 63 Avanti R1 for several reasons:

the pleasure of a v8 kind of motor quite unusual in my french country

Good looking sport car design by an genius of his time

they are supposed to be rarest than let's say an E TYPE or a mustang... especialy here in France

Except that this sunday a classic car meeting was occuring twenty five miles from where I live (west of France nearby LE MANS of 24h race fame).

I could'nt attend to be there but a friend of mine studebaker champion owner went and saw guess what... another gorgeous 63 avanti, white one with ronded frontlights (mine are square).

Two questions: Did they really only made around 3300 of them first year of production because seeing another one here seems more like that they built 300 000 of them.

And more seriously second question: the other owner was astonished that a first year avanti could have square frontlights, I've read that around 700 of them where built this way.

Can anyone confirm those figures?

Best regards

Pierre

[Gunslinger]

There are no firm numbers for which are true '63 and true '64 cars. It's generally accepted that when the square headlight cars came out it was the start of the '64 model year, but there are some discrepancies in the numbers. Strictly by serial numbers that would make about 750 (+ or -) cars with square headlights that would qualify as true '64 cars, but Studebaker kept the round headlight version an option, so it's possible some round light cars could have been made. I've also seen figures of 809 '64 cars made but that could include the round headlight '64s as well. Add to that the early prototype cars were later updated with '64 equipment and sold as '64s. Added to that some transition cars...round headlight cars with '64 interior appointments (supposedly about 80 cars), and some could have been titled as '63s and some as '64s. There's also earlier '63 cars that went unsold and were titled as '64s when eventually sold. So...it's a real mess trying to determine actual numbers.

As far as the total number of Avanti's built by Studebaker altogether, there were 4643 true production cars plus a few prototypes eventually sold as '64s after the end of regular production. I'm not sure if anyone knows the actual number of prototypes but I've seen numbers of about ten reported.