Studie Studies

"Do you still drive a Studebaker?" On the rare occasions when I'm in touch with college classmates this question often comes up. It shouldn't surprise me, I suppose, because my undergraduate years, 1962-66, are what I call my "Studebaker period."

It started by happenstance. I was dating the daughter of a Ford dealer, and was eager to pass the family Nash Rambler down to my sister. My girlfriend's father had taken a '57 Ford Ranch Wagon in trade, which appealed to me, but it was sold before I could put in my bid. The next car in my price range was a '57 Studebaker that had belonged to the local deputy sherrif. I handed over $300 and it was mine, with 30,000 miles, believed correct, on the clock.

It was what we call a "stripper," the bottom-feeder model with rubber window moldings and virtually no trim. It didn't even have a passenger sun visor. Studebaker pretentiously called it "Custom Commander" (the upmarket model being, curiously, "DeLuxe"), but it had the virtue of being the lightest V8 sedan of its model year, which meant that it could win stoplight drags, or, at the very least, burn lots of rubber. While no stylistic icon, its basic body dating from 1953, it looked far better, particularly in top-line President trim, than the rather grotesque 1958 facelift.

During the summer of 1964 I noticed a '53 "Loewy coupe" at my local garage (that's not Raymond Loewy in the photo, it's Studebaker president Harold Vance). The car had been in an accident, and the engine and transmission had been removed. The garage owner was happy to tow the carcase to my house - gratis. I spent that summer and the next working evenings in a paper mill and restoring the car during the day.

I briefly entertained thoughts of building a Studillac, but found a "Sweepstakes 259" engine in a local junkyard, the "power-pack" version with a Carter WCFB four-barrel, removed from a '56 Commander sedan. I bought two parts cars, one with an overdrive transmission, the other with straight sheet metal to replace the damaged panels on my car. I acquired a second-hand Hurst shifter, made brackets to adapt it to the Studie transmission and ordered a dual exhaust kit from the Montgomery Ward catalog. The car was on the road in time to take me back to campus for my senior year in September 1965 (and my sister took over the '57).

It was not the sought-after pillarless Starliner hardtop, instead the "post" Commander Regal Starlight coupe. What it lacked in style was made up in sturdiness - the Starliners had a reputation for rattles. With a 185-hp engine and a wealth of ratios, thanks to the overdrive, it would not only win stoplight drags but also achieve 25 mpg on the highway. The pot metal trim was pitted, so I took most of it off and filled the holes. It gave the car a cleaner appearance, at a cost of losing the rare "inverted Mercedes" emblems from early 1953 production.

Alas, all things end and so did my Studebaker period. Once I had graduated and earned some money I lusted for something more modern, sportier. Eschewing a new car and payments, I bought a used Austin-Healey Sprite. I sold the Studie to a middle-aged woman, a writer who thought it looked "Italian." She promptly wrecked it.

Elegant Amelia

Few, I suspect, are the carfolk who know that Florida's Amelia Island is named for the second daughter of England's George II. Fewer still, I'm quite certain, are those who don't associate the community near Jacksonville with the southeast's premier automotive concours d'elegance, worthy of mention in the same breath as Pebble Beach or Meadow Brook Hall. Sunday, March 12th, was the eleventh Amelia Island Concours d'Elegance, held on the grounds of the Ritz Carlton and adjacent Golf Club of Amelia Island, and a wonderful day it was.

It's not a simple task to put 300 cars on a golf course, but the concours chairman, Jacksonville restorer Bill Warner, and his staff have it down to a fine art. Festivities begin on Friday, with a tour for the featured marque, this year Stanley Steamer. A sea of semis unloads show cars in the staging area, and by Saturday afternoon the furniture arrives. At sundown a number of concours cars have already moved into place.

Sunday morning the arrivals began in earnest, first singly, then in convoys. Stanleys, as featured marque, had three classes: coffin nose, condenser, and tiller-steered. A replica of the record-setting Stanley "Rocket" racer was also on display. Judges swung into action by 9:00, and swiftly completed their rounds. By lunchtime, the grounds were seething with spectators. It's not all Full Classics at Amelia. There are American convertibles, and microcars, like a Peel Trident and the Biscooter, Gabriel Voisin's final automotive design. Alternative propulsion was a sub-theme this year, so there were oddities like a turbine-powered Deuce roadster and the last Rauch & Lang, a gas-electric hybrid sedan built for the son of Hetty Green, the Witch of Wall Street.

A newly restored GM Futurliner was on hand, opened in appropriate display mode, and a few promotional cars, such as a Moxie horseback car. Several parades of automotive genres took place throughout the day, and by afternoon the various prizes were announced. Best of Show was awarded to Richard Riegel's 1932 DuPont sport phaeton, and the Concours de Sport trophy to the 1961 Ferrari 250TRI of Peter Sachs. Honoree for this year's event was racing driver Johnny Rutherford.

As shadows grew long, the field of cars took leave. By sundown, only immobile vehicles remained, awaiting a tow, and a few reminders of the elegant day. Did one of the Mercedes drivers forget his hardtop?

When George Met Donald

It all started aboard the Queen Elizabeth (if the current ocean liner is "QE2," can we call its predecessor "QE1"?). Donald Healey, the British designer who had been building limited-production Riley-engined Healey Silverstone sports cars, Westland roadsters, Abbott dropheads and Elliot saloons, was on his way to America in search of Cadillac engines to pep up his cars. Aboard ship he met George Mason, head of Nash Motors, and the two men hit it off. "If you can't get engines from Cadillac," George told Donald, "come see me." He couldn't, so he did.

Thus was born the Nash-Healey, an American drive train in an English chassis and, at first, English body. Mason insisted on a Nash-themed grille, so the prototype borrowed a snout from Bill Flajole's NXI, a concept car that grew up to become the Metropolitan. The production Nash-Healey, which used the grille of the 1951 Ambassador, debuted at Paris and London in the Autumn of 1950. Healey campaigned several of the cars at LeMans with considerable success in 1950-53. The Healey-modified engine, a Nash Ambassador ohv six with aluminum head and twin SU carburetors, became an optional engine for US Ambassadors in 1953.

Mason didn't like the British-bodied car, which was built in aluminum by Panelcraft. He had Pininfarina, then doing some contract work for Nash, build up a more voluptuous body in steel, and this became the 1952 Nash-Healey. Its signature grille, which surrounded the headlights, was adapted for Nashes in 1955 and '56. A Nash-Healey coupe, appropriately called "LeMans," was introduced at the 1953 Chicago Auto Show and replaced the roadster in production. In mid-1954, the coupe was given a new roof profile with "dog leg" C-pillar.

The 1954 merger of Nash with Hudson and Mason's subsequent untimely death, not to mention the $1,000 dollar loss the company took on each car, resulted in cancellation of the program after 506 cars were built. Healey, however, became a household word on the success of the Healey Hundred, which enjoyed a long career as the Austin-Healey.

Perhaps only 30 Nash-Healeys were the late style coupe, one of whose remains grace the top of this page. The car was snapped a couple of years ago at Ed Moore's magical Bellingham Auto Sales in Massachusetts. It was in pieces when it left there last month, but Ed still has some Nash-Healey parts and information, and lots of other cars.

Excess Baggage

Willys-Overland eagerly touted the luggage capacity of the new Aero models in 1952: "24 cubic feet of space - ample for a large family." They even bragged about the primitive exterior hinges: "outside where they can't bite into luggage." That's quite remarkable for what was a comparatively small car; the Packard Patrician rated but 30 cubic feet.

We take luggage capacity pretty much for granted, forgetting that early cars had none at all. Any passenger suitcases had to go on the roof or behind racks on the running board. The first "indoor" luggage space was the trunk, just that, a steamer trunk fastened to the rear of the car. By the early 1930s, automakers started to provide inside storage with an outside door; by mid-decade the "touring trunk" became popular, though the first ones, like this 1935 Hudson, were top loading.

Our Ford Falcon wagon was a vast cavern, more than adequate for our "large family" of five. Just as adequate, it turned out, was its successor, a 1970 Chevy Impala, another 30-cubic-footer (by GM's calculation - Automotive Industries counted its "usable luggage space" barely half that). The Chevy Suburban that replaced it, first in a long succession of Foster 'Burbs, made capacity almost irrelevant.

If luggage-measuring systems are comparable, today's cars are puny by Packard or Impala standards. The Lincoln Town Car counts only 21 cubic feet of space, though it's not the largest American sedan trunk. Perhaps surprisingly, that distinction goes to the Ford Five Hundred/Mercury Montego twins with 21.2. Not enough space? You can still put things on the roof.

Need a trunk for your old car? You can find one at Hershey. At Beaulieu Autojumble you can also find vendors of vintage luggage to put on your vintage roof.

Conspicuous Consumption

Chances are you associate Consumer Reports with boring, sensible cars - transportation appliances. Chances are you also, like me, sneak off to the library to consult their ratings when buying your own daily driver, whether it's new or, like mine, well used.

Yesterday CR opened their test site to the automotive and mainstream media, giving us a glimpse of how those ratings are made and revealing that there are plenty of car guys and gals on their 21-member staff. Scribblers on hand were as diverse as columnists for the San Francisco Chronicle, the online broadcast "Auto Lab" and popular Professional Car Reporter Gregg Merksamer.

Senior Director David "Champ" Champion led the tour of the facility, located on a 327-acre campus originally the site of Connecticut Dragway. Included were demonstrations of CR's tests for cornering abilility, road handling, headlight performance and wet-road braking. Particularly convincing was a dramatic demo of electronic stability control, a feature Champ calls the "single most important recent advance in safety." Comparative runs showed that ESC could make the difference between controlling a car in an evasive maneuver and losing it. He and the CR staff feel it should be standard equipment on all cars.

CR testing now includes all types of cars, economy to luxury, compact to SUV. A dedicated course called "Rock Hill" sorts out 4x4 prowess, rating yesterday's cars, in descending order of agility, Land Rover, Toyota Tundra, Hummer H3 and Ford Explorer (the lack of daylight under the Explorer exposes its Achilles heel - its skid plates got a workout). Sports cars, like the Mazda MX-5 Miata and Pontiac Solstice, are included, as are hot hatches like the VW GTI. Interesting ongoing investigations are a "grease burning" modification to a VW diesel and aftermarket supercharger on a Toyota. Of course practical tests, like cargo capacity and installation of child seats, are still a staple of CR evaluations.

CR had an agenda for all this festivity, the launch of the annual Auto Issue, which debuts today. Of no surprise to anyone was the fact that all ten Top Picks are Japanese (last year's single holdout was the Ford Focus). New (or redesigned) TPs are the Honda Civic, Toyota Highlander Hybrid, Infiniti M35x and Honda Ridgeline pickup. They join returning alumni Honda Accord, Acura TL, Subaru Forester, Honda Odyssey, Toyota Prius and Subaru Impreza WRX/STi.

While all CR-tested cars are new (they buy them from dealers and keep them for 6-8 months and about that many thousand miles) there's evidence that somebody on staff has a fondness for old cars - British ones at that.