Hotcars.com writer Eugenia Akhim (2022) linked to an Indie Auto article to cite the viewpoint that the 1958 Studebaker “was one of the ugliest cars to come out of the 1950s.” That’s not exactly what I wrote, but I am not going to press the issue. More interesting to me is Akhim’s insistence that the 1958 Studebaker’s “negative reception is unjustified.” The car was actually “ahead of its time.”
As Akhim (2022) notes, styling is subjective. So if she enjoys the 1958 Studebaker President, more power to her. However, I am curious about the logic behind her statement that this “was not a hideous automobile, just one that had its own futuristic aesthetic and stand out qualities.”
What is so ‘futuristic’ about the 1958 Studebaker?
The 1958 Studebaker’s line of family cars were hardly in the same category as the 1963 Avanti, whose aerodynamic shape anticipated U.S. automotive styling for decades (go here for further discussion).
For 1958 Studebaker fielded the second oldest body in the U.S. auto industry aside from the revived Rambler American. The Studebakers were showing their age, with four-door sedans and wagons sporting an unusually tall greenhouse and thick door pillars.
Most Studebaker family cars received new tail fins for 1958, but there was nothing groundbreaking about them. The fins canted outward, kind of like the previous year’s Ford. Unfortunately, the Studebaker’s dual-pod taillights looked contorted because one was located inside the fin and the other was not.
Meanwhile, like almost all other U.S. cars, the front end got quad headlights. Alas, Studebaker couldn’t afford new sheetmetal to fit them properly, so the headlights bulged out like Chihuahua eyes.
I would suggest that the only “futuristic” aspect of the Studebaker’s styling was its speedometer, which was on a rotating ribbon that changed color with the car’s speed.
This feature was introduced two years earlier, but in 1958 the speedometer was put inside a rectangular instrument cluster. To my eyes this merely reduced the dashboard’s rather sparse and eccentric design, but Akhim (2022) offered a more positive take: It was “very stylish and very trendy.”
Akhim doesn’t get her Studebaker history quite right
The overall thrust of Akhim’s (2022) article was to present the 1958 Studebaker’s top-end President series as having been discovered by collectors. I don’t follow the collectible car market so couldn’t speculate on whether that is true. What I can say is that her historical analysis has a casual quality.
As a case in point, she argues that the bullet-nosed Studebaker received a “lukewarm reception.” In fact, the 1950-51 models were by far the best-selling cars in that automaker’s history (go here for further discussion).
Akhim (2022) also states that all three of the 1958 President’s body styles — which she lists as a four-door sedan, wagon and “two-door hardtop sedan” (what’s that?) — were placed on a 116.6-inch wheelbase. In contrast, Richard Langworth (1979, 1993) and the auto editors of Consumer Guide (2006) list the wheelbase for the hardtop as 116.5 inches, while the sedan used the four-inch-longer wheelbase of the Hawk. No wagon is listed for the President series. The Provincial wagon shown here was considered part of the Commander series.
Why didn’t Akhim make apples-to-apples comparisons?
I sort-of get why Akhim (2022) compares the Studebaker President with the Volkswagen Beetle. That import was one of the hottest cars of the late-50s. Even so, a more useful comparison would have been with domestic products that directly competed against the President — the top-end Chevrolet, Ford, Plymouth and Rambler Ambassador.
The problem with such comparisons is that they would have been unflattering to the Studebaker. All of the Big Three cars had lower, longer and wider styling. Meanwhile, the Ambassador had advantages such as a more compact size, unit-body construction and a four-door hardtop.
Missing one way Studebaker was ahead of its time
Let’s go back to Akhim’s contention that the 1958 President was ahead of its time. I would suggest that the most substantive evidence for that claim is that Studebaker’s top-end series anticipated the luxury mid-sized cars of the 1970s. The President was arguably a forerunner of the Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme.
Tellingly, Akhim didn’t make the above argument. Perhaps she didn’t think that collectors would care. Or perhaps her research was too superficial.
Also see ‘Corey Lewis offers a questionable take on the 1961-63 Imperial’
Since I have given Akhim a hard time, I should note that her article was vastly better than the last hotcars.com piece reviewed at Indie Auto (go here). That said, what we have here is an auto history profile which does not offer the depth and accuracy of those published at collector-oriented media outlets such as Hemmings and Hagerty.
NOTES:
Production figures and specifications are from the auto editors of Consumer Guide 2006), Gunnell (2002), Wikipedia (2013).
Share your reactions to this post with a comment below or a note to the editor.
RE:SOURCES
- Akhim, Eugenia; 2022. “These Are The Best Features Of The 1958 Studebaker President.” Hotcars.com. Posted May 17.
- Auto editors of Consumer Guide; 2006. Encyclopedia of American Cars. Publications International, Lincolnwood, Ill.
- Gunnell, John; 2002. Standard Catalog of American Cars, 1946-1975. Revised 4th Ed. Krause Publications, Iola, WI.
- Langworth, Richard M.; 1979, 1993. Studebaker 1946-1966: The Classic Postwar Years. Motorbooks International, Osceola, WI.
- Wikipedia; 2013. “U.S. Automobile Production Figures.” Accessed July 5.
ADVERTISING & BROCHURES:
- oldcaradvertising.com: Studebaker (1958)
- oldcarbrochures.org: Chevrolet (1958); Dodge (1956); Oldsmobile Cutlass (1970); Studebaker (1956, 1957, 1958)
Curtis-Wright should have put Studebaker-Packard out of its misery at the end of 1956. I suspect that the dealer franchise laws in the greater 48-states likely made that action impossible. But what if Studebaker sold out to A.M.C., put a Packard hardtop, convertible and sedan out based on the 1956 car with a couple of updates as A.M.C.’s halo car, then fixed the stodgy sedan elements of the 1956 President sedan and wagon variant, such as the overly thick door frames and maybe a hardtop. With A.M.C.’s Rambler line-up and the discontinuation of the big Nash and Hudson, A.M.C. would have a full-line of cars. After all, Nance was going to Ford’s M.E.L. Romney could have rationalized the model line-ups and coordinated the manufacturing and labor issues; however, given Romney’s own situation at A.M.C., he might have just said, “PASS”!
James, I get the impression from Patrick Foster’s writings that AMC’s finances were extremely fragile well into the 1957 model year. Romney reportedly hinted at how close AMC came to insolvency. If that’s true, I could see why he might have flatly refused to take on any additional complexity.
Even after Rambler sales started to take off, Romney kept AMC’s lineup unusually simple, e.g., not adding back a two-door hardtop until 1963. I find that utterly fascinating because it went against the grain for a U.S. automaker of that time period.
I admit that the ’58 Studebaker sedan does not invoke thoughts of futurism for me either, and agree that it takes imagination to come up with many “ahead of its time” features. The dashboard in the President was, indeed, too austere for a car that was advertised as being luxurious. At least the headlight pods carried 4 headlights, not like the “fake” installations on ’57 Plymouths! However, the ’58 “sedans” (non-Hawks) were an “interim” car as Studebaker was just treading water with the “old” design while working diligently on development of the Lark.
May l also point out that the ’58s were in fact good automobiles, fully capable and reliable and serviceable for many years. l do agree with Ms. Akhim that they were not “hideous automobiles”. And if you’ve ever been at a photo shoot with 3 President Hardtops which were in very nice condition, as l have (no, l don’t own one), you’d be more impressed than dismissive of their looks.
There was some very interesting, notable and unique automotive history “written” by Studebaker after 1956, Mr. Duvall. l hope that you would have been just as happy at the closing of Oldsmobile, Borgward, Auburn, and Kaiser.
Stewdi, I agree that the 1958 Studebakers had some things going for them. For example, in size they anticipated the mid-sized car better than the Rambler.
On the styling front, I find the two-door hardtop’s roofline to be quite attractive. It’s too bad the hardtop wasn’t offered in 1957, where it would have matched up well with the nicely styled front and rear. It just seems odd that an automaker that close to insolvency would come out with a new roofline that would only be used one year. Might that money have been better spent redoing the front end so the quads were better integrated?