Engineless Avanti!

[Geoff]

Oh humans knew about streamlining. Lots was discovered in the 1940s via the Germans and then WWII and all those fun times. In the 1930s Wunibald Kamm discovered that if you design a vehicle with a teardrop rear (all the way to the tip), and then truncate the rear before the tip [usually on an angle but some cut vertical], that the effect to the air is similar to leaving the tip. Today we say cars with this style have a Kammback, Kamm tail, or k-tail.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kammback

I concede the Studebaker budget and the stress of the timing in getting a new halo car to market would have pushed anything extravagant to the back burner or off the table. That part is unfortunate because, damn! What if, right?

[mfg]

7 minutes ago, GeoffC312 said:

Oh humans knew about streamlining. Lots was discovered in the 1940s via the Germans and then WWII and all those fun times. In the 1930s Wunibald Kamm discovered that if you design a vehicle with a teardrop rear (all the way to the tip), and then truncate the rear before the tip [usually on an angle but some cut vertical], that the effect to the air is similar to leaving the tip. Today we say cars with this style have a Kammback, Kamm tail, or k-tail.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kammback

I concede the Studebaker budget and the stress of the timing in getting a new halo car to market would have pushed anything extravagant to the back burner or off the table. That part is unfortunate because, damn! What if, right?

I believe the latest Navy ships utilize a truncated stern, which increases their speed.

[Anthony63]

On 4/28/2023 at 7:56 PM, Nelson said:

Anthony. What do you know about the number 8 Avanti? Was it run at Bonneville at all.? If not, why?

Numbers 8 and 9 were used as test cars and there as potential backups in 1962. In 1963 the 9 car was setup with the final version of the R3 and bumped the record up to 170.78mph. I remember that Andy had said that the 299s ran better and were a better balanced engine than the 304.5. The 8 car was still used for testing but never did run quite right. It was not an overheating issue but I'm not sure what it was. There was a lot of testing so it could have been any number of things. September 16, 1963 the salt conditions were too bad. October 16-23 the salt was wet and they had traction issues and because of this the Due Cento only achieved 198. Somewhere I have copies that Andy gave me of the actual time slips, I'll keep looking. They planned to return but then became the end of Studebaker. So the 9 car was used for record purposes with the R3 since it was running better than the 8 car. So long story short in 62 the Due Cento (which it wasn't named yet) ran the best with the 299 and then in 63 between the 8 and 9, the 9 ran better so was used for the R3 records. I hope that I answered that question.