5 Great Avanti Quotes

[Dwain G.]

My favorite Avanti quote from Steve Blake ( it may not be word for word)
"We're putting a 20 year old body on a 30 year old chassis, with 70 year old workers in a 100 year old plant"

[Studebaker Wheel]

As I recall, Otto had a personal dislike for the Avanti, and from even before the war, was always critical of Studebaker management steering the company in the wrong direction a lot of the time.

Craig

Hard to argue with him on any of those points!

[studegary]

Yeah but those have Ford engines!

At least the last three years of Avantis did have Ford engines.

[53k]

The cars weren't available when the demand for them was at its peak.

Craig

Way too true. They lost a lot of orders due to inability to fill them. In 1963 I stopped in a dealership in Kansas City, Missouri. They told me they had an order from a distillery company for seven Avantis for their salesmen to drive. Couldn't furnish them, lost the order.
Interestingly, they had a Mercedes 300SL on the floor- was traded in on an Avanti. They also had a virtually new Corvair Monza- also traded on an Avanti.

[Studebaker Wheel]

Way too true. They lost a lot of orders due to inability to fill them. In 1963 I stopped in a dealership in Kansas City, Missouri. They told me they had an order from a distillery company for seven Avantis for their salesmen to drive. Couldn't furnish them, lost the order.
Interestingly, they had a Mercedes 300SL on the floor- was traded in on an Avanti. They also had a virtually new Corvair Monza- also traded on an Avanti.

Was the dealer Frontier Motors at 2735 Main?? Have had this ad in a frame hanging on the wall for 20 years or so.

[53k]

Was the dealer Frontier Motors at 2735 Main?? Have had this ad in a frame hanging on the wall for 20 years or so.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]58764[/ATTACH]

I can't be sure, but the location looks about right. They were the biggest dealer in the area and stocked a lot of cars including some Avanti-powered models.
The mention on the bottom is very interesting in that Anderson Motors was a very successful small town dealer. They claimed to have sold more Studebaker trucks in Anderson County than Ford, GMC/Chevrolet and Dodge combined. One of the two Anderson brothers told me that the ordering list didn't mean anything. If he needed something special built, he could walk right in to the President's office, tell him what he wanted and he would get it. Before Studebaker shut down the Andersons took on a Ford franchise and sold them along with Studebakers. They told me that Studebaker delivery preparation costs and warranty costs were far less than for the Fords they were selling.
The Lake Garnett Grand Prix was a pretty significant race in those days. I went to the race one time with a doctor friend (driving a MGTD). When we got there I found my dealer racing his Austin-Healy Sprite. He used my trade-in '61 Cruiser to pull the Sprite to the race on a small trailer.
Apparently the race has been revived (http://lggpr.org/index.php). It stuck in my mind that the race was discontinued because an AC Cobra went off the track and either seriously injured or killed the driver. The car was destroyed.