World of Speed Museum, Wilsonville Oregon

[63 R2 Hawk]

The World of Speed Museum in Wilsonville, Oregon is featuring a display of "muscle cars", with the usual '64 Pontiac GTO heralded as the first muscle car and an array of the Mopar, Ford and other GM street and strip racers. I looked on the museum's website page and didn't see any Studebakers, does anybody know if there are any on display? (I think that's a rhetorical question!). Still, I would enjoy seeing all those "muscle cars" but if I go, I'll be compelled to ask them why no Studebakers made the cut. There's a Yenko Camaro in the display, reminded me of the Yenko Nova that consistently gets beat by the Plain Brown R3 Challenger!!!

[Commander Eddie]

Ed, I was just there with the Studebaker Club and the Plymouth Club about a month ago and saw no Studebakers. They did have a good display of Indy cars, however. I was disappointed they did not have the NOVI there even though about a half dozen or so of the cars had come directly from the Indy 500 Speedway museum on temporary loan.
There just are not many Studebaker race cars located in this part of the country that are available for display.

[63 R2 Hawk]

The current WOS featured category is Muscle Cars, as opposed to pure race cars. I always felt the REAL muscle car moniker should have been bestowed on the Studebaker R cars-especially the R2 Lark types-instead of the Pontiac GTO, etc. Yes, I "grew up" on "Goats", 409s, 440s, 406s, Hemis, small blocks and "rat motors", but Studebaker was ahead of the game even though they pretty much used nothing but "off the shelf" parts