Studillac

[grandhawk]

There is so much miss information on here it's pitiful. I told Bob Bee (May he RIP) all I knew about Studillacs and what he's said has been twisted and miss quoted Bob and I became very good friends when He got his Studillac and found my name and phone # in it I told him Bill Fricks name and address And he became friends with him.

[grandhawk]

It like this, if you own a Studebaker with a caddy engine in it, you have a caddybaker. If you own a studebaker, Bill Frick built you have a Studillac, It's that simple. I have a problem with someone with a caddybaker putting on a studillac emblem or trying to make a caddybaker a stuillac.

[ddub]

There is so much miss information on here it's pitiful. I told Bob Bee (May he RIP) all I knew about Studillacs and what he's said has been twisted and miss quoted Bob and I became very good friends when He got his Studillac and found my name and phone # in it I told him Bill Fricks name and address And he became friends with him.

Maybe you can supply the correct info.

[parts2]

The first "real car" I was going to buy..in 1966 when a teen was a Studillac.. I remember the badges..but could be they were put on a home built. I was 17 and just wanted the car..didn't know much about them. It was fast but had some rust..(Chicago).
I remember it as sort of Cream color..but it is a long time. My uncles and Dad talked me out of it.."not original engine" etc..

I have wanted a 53 Coupe ever since. Ironically my car though SBC powered had Cadillac script SBC valve covers..which I removed.
The builder di an excellent job..and he is getting them back..very soon..

Would like to read more about these Studillac conversions..

searching..

[PeterHawk]

I have a picture of the Studillac emblem from the Boettcher car. As soon as I figure out how to attach it, I will post it.

[SN-60]

A Studillac build would be a fun, rather easy project. The key, of course, would be to find the correct period Cadillac engine and associated parts. An Eldorado with dual quads could be had for $50-$250 dollars years ago......
Today a 'collector' would probably ask $10,000 for that same hunk of iron!

[cultural infidel]

There is so much miss information on here it's pitiful. I told Bob Bee (May he RIP) all I knew about Studillacs and what he's said has been twisted and miss quoted Bob and I became very good friends when He got his Studillac and found my name and phone # in it I told him Bill Fricks name and address And he became friends with him.

Are you going to share the real information?


Also, are there any pictures of these cars? Or is that part of the mystery?

[grandhawk]

Has anyone notice that the 3 or 4 owners of the known existing Studillacs haven't posted any info on the forums. I can't speak for the others but I wouldn't be surprised if they feel like I do. I would love to look at a studebaker with a caddy in it and tell the owner this is a Frick Studillac. I did this with the owner of the 55 studillac in Ind. I do not like to hear of someone with a caddybaker trying to pass it off as a Frick Studillac. This dose happen. For that reason I am careful as to how much detail I give out. I guess I am a little paranoid. Almost all the Studillacs had the little black plastic plate that said custom installation by Bill Frick 1000 sunrise hwy rockville centre L.I. N.Y. and the phone # this was placed on the fan shroud. This piece is easily reproduced so I omitted the zip and phone # If you have questions ask I sure don't know everything there is to know, even Bill himself had forgotten some things because of time. Also most of the Stidillacs had the merc rear witch gave the 11: brakes and the heavy duty rear The emblems on mine were up behind the rear quarter windows in place of the paint line script I have one of these emblems brand new it's never been on a car, I received it from Ted schell a fellow that did the wiring for Frick. If you have questions I will try to answer them. Tom Portesy

[r1lark]

Has anyone notice that the 3 or 4 owners of the known existing Studillacs haven't posted any info on the forums.

Do we know if these 3 or 4 owners even frequent the forum?

[t walgamuth]

This is a wonderful thread. I have always heard of the Studillacs but never of a Caddybaker. I had no idea that there is thought to be an exclusive right to use the term Studillac by Frick built cars.

I have a little Caddy knowledge from back when I had six of them and was hot on them. A comment: if it was a column shifted caddy transmission it would be from a post war Caddy probably. The cars with the Lasalle transmission would have the shifter like in the above picture, sprouting from the transmission and closer to the dash. The cars with the shifter near the seat would be using the later Caddy trans with an aftermarket floor shifter added. It sounds to me as if you could have gotten the transmission one of three ways from Frick: on the column, on the floor with an aftermarket shifter and thus the shifter would be near the seat or with lasalle tranny and the shifter coming right out of the tranny close to the dash. This is just my pondering based on my background knowledge and what has been written here in this thread.

I had no idea there was so much information out there about Frick's cars.

I read an article a few years ago about Frick. I believe he raced under the name "Ted Tappet and was an excellent race driver, even competing at LeMans. Briggs Cunningham wanted to enter a Fordillac there but the officials would not recognize it as a stock vehicle so Cunningham entered the two 1950 Caddys in 1950 and had respectable finishes with a tenth and eleventh place with his two caddies, beating such cars a Ferraris since his car finished and many faster cars did not. His cars were not strictly stock. The two door sedan had two two barrel carbs and a few other minor modifications. The second car had a complete fabricated low streamlined body of aluminum built by some engineers from Grumman on their spare time. The second car also had about five two barrel carbs. I visited the Collier museum in Florida about twenty years ago and with their permission crawled all over the cad coupe car and took pictures of everything on it.

The Grumman bodied car was pretty cool with the fabricated body. It had a racing bucket seat and full instrumentation like a proper race car but retained the caddy column shifter.

Cunningham was quite a guy. Quiet and unassuming and well loved by the people who worked with him. He drove about 22 of the 24 hours of the 1950 race IIRC because he felt that Bill Speer might not be able to nurse the aluminum bodied car to the finish since it had had the transmission damaged very early in the race after being stuffed into a sand trap and all but high gear being ripped out. Cunningham was a real competitor. He also sailed and won the America cup somewhere in those years as well.

The stock bodied caddy has a tow hitch on the back. After competing at LeMans it was used to tow other race cars to races in later years. It has a 52 four barrel setup on the engine and duals running the 52 exhaust manifolds now. I don't remember if the engine is still the 50 engine that raced at LeMans or not. the aftermarket Marchal driving lights mounted on the front bumper have little blocks of wood carved as adaptors to fit the curve of the caddy bumper and the front seat has a non stock adjustment screw for the seat back angle they must have added. The car also has slightly different leaf springs from what was on most Caddys of the era. I thought they might be export springs as offered when cars went to Europe.

I wrote an article about it for the Cadillac club newsletter back then but they did not publish it because I only had color photos and they needed black and white to print it in their magazine.

I believe Frick quit racing after a friend died in a crash....perhaps it was the 1955 Mercedes crash at LeMans that killed about a hundred people.

[JoeHall]

I wonder if Stude-Packard Corp copied Bill Frick's idea, with the 56J. I know it was popular back then to install larger cars' motors into smaller cars to make them go faster, but those were one-offs. Bill Frick did it first with our Studes, on a larger scale production basis. S-P came along later and did the same thing with the Packard motor in the 56J..

[t walgamuth]

Bill did Fordillacs too I believe. that was what briggs wanted to race at LeMans in 1950.

[SN-60]

I wonder if Stude-Packard Corp copied Bill Frick's idea, with the 56J. I know it was popular back then to install larger cars' motors into smaller cars to make them go faster, but those were one-offs. Bill Frick did it first with our Studes, on a larger scale production basis. S-P came along later and did the same thing with the Packard motor in the 56J..

I always wondered if anyone at the time bothered to photograph the 56J production line?...Which I understand was at a completely different location than the regular 6cyl and V8 lines. And if so, do these photos still exist?

[grandhawk]

I wonder if Stude-Packard Corp copied Bill Frick's idea, with the 56J. I know it was popular back then to install larger cars' motors into smaller cars to make them go faster, but those were one-offs. Bill Frick did it first with our Studes, on a larger scale production basis. S-P came along later and did the same thing with the Packard motor in the 56J..

Very interesting I heard from a fellow on another forum Bill Frick and caroll shellby were friends or new each other. Dosen't that make you think.

[GreaseGirl]

Thank you all for the info! @grandhawk, I wasn't aware of the designation of "Studillac" and "Caddybaker" naming...Studillac sounds so much cooler!

fter driving my '55 for 5 or so years now, and getting more acquainted with turning a wrench...I'm ready to give her a new heart. The small block Chevy currently residing in my Stude has been a practical choice, and has worked well for that as my Stude has been my daily...and I probably logged 15,000 miles in one year at the peak! But I've always felt a little guilty with a run-of-the-mill engine in her. Hearing about Studebaker - Cadillac conversions quite some time ago - I always thought that would be really cool, period correct but hod-rod-driven swap to do. The other week, I mentioned this in passing to a friend - and he said he had a '53 Cadi engine sitting in his garage, awaiting a cool project and offered it to me at a price I couldn't refuse! I had been meaning to bring Stude into the garage for awhile now, and get some minor engine work done...but now it looks like I'll have a larger project on my hands!

I'd love any further advice. I've found @mbstude's Studillac blog, which has some good info...and I think I recall seeing some reference to a book or something in Turning Wheels. Time to get wrenchin!