I did it too!!!....

let the fun begin!

good for you! good luck with your dream car.

It sounds like a perfectly nice car to me...you will have a blast!!!

You're gonna love it!
Just traditional, nothin' special...
They're all special!

Congratulations Ricardo, I bet you will enjoy the heck out of it!

Ricardo, good choice, you won't be disappointed. Kirk is a great person to deal with. Tell him hi for me. Eddie

Congratulations, Ricardo. You're in for a real treat. The building process, including all the decisions that have to be made, are just as much fun as the car itself. Enjoy the ride. It's a great one. You won't be disappointed.

Congrats! Another member of the "Perpetual Grin" Society!

BD

As you say guys; they're all very special! I'm an architect so I think I have a little bit of authority and knowhow to say this: To me the Porsche 356 along with probably the old Mercedes 190 series (including the Gullwing), the Bug, Karmann Ghia, some Ferraris and '55 to '59 Chevys and Cadillacs are the most beautiful automotive designs ever, bar none (Ok, ok I also like the Super Bird by Chrysler Plymouth, Hemis, GTO's, Mustangs...I'm a hopeless car junkie!). If I had to choose an all-time favorite from a design standpoint, it'd have to be the 356, especially the older models. Thank you again for all your nice thoughts and, as I said, I'll post progress pictures as soon as I get them. I know for a fact you'll all get a kick out of it.....

Congrats!

Jim Ward

Ricardo,

I agree with most of your classic car choices except for two. The 59 Chevy is in my eyes the ugliest Chevy ever and the Mercedes 190 SL, while not too bad, pales to the 300SL.

I may be somewhat biased but the lines of the 53 Studebaker Starlight Coupe is flawless. Not a bad angle in any direction. Raymond Lowey's team, in particular Bob Bourke did an allstar in 53! If you haven't seen one, by all means look it up, think you'll agree!

Bruce

Come on you guys...the most beautiful mass produced car every made was the Jag XKE (pre 68, with the straight six).
Ron

RonO,

I was only taking exception to two selections I don't think deserve to be in HIS list. Yes, the Jag was a classic, still is. I remember when they first came out. R&T had a red one on the cover and I about creamed in my jeans. I was just about ready to discharged from the service and I did lots of brain storming to see if I could fit one in, I didn't, so I ended up with a new powder blue 1961 bugeyed Sprite. Quite a let down but I'll never forget that cover photo. By the way, after missing a couple of e-Bay auctions for the May, 1955 R&T which has the Speedster road test in it, I e mailed a buddy in Illinois who is a lit collector. He had the issue so he copied the cover and the road test for me.

I still stand by my selection of the 53 Stude coupe and hardtop as probably the best looking American made auto of the last 60 years. The NY museum of modern art agreed with me. Also the 63 Stude Avanti is a milestone design. Those two designs just never age, even after 50 years, 40 in the Avanti!

Bruce

I had a '69 and I thought that was the last great XKE roadster. Question is, with all the companies making really good 356 repro's, why hasn't any of them done the XKE? I would still have my XKE if it was even remotely reliable. A good repro would probably sell.

I'll buy a fake XKE, soft and hard tops, please.

Ricardo the Architect named about half the cars on the road during the 50-60's, although I would agree with about half his choices,
they are really no-brainers...
The Rolls/Bentleys weren't too shabby in those days or maybe the
Kaiser Darren....One of my favs was the Aston Martin Lagonda....
Fastest Production Sedan, or how about the Masarati Quatroporte
another great sedan....If they past you on the road, it would
get your attention..............
It all comes down to personal taste, like everything...........

All you guys forgot the Fiat 850!

Robert, I didn't forget....I intentionally didn't mention it...
I had a 69....do you see the rear end of the Z3 in the 850...
I sure do........

How come no one has mentioned the Chrysler Reliant k....

Hi guys,
What about the Trabant?.......Hey! just kidding ;-)
Seriously though, a strong contender to be added to all time
classics displaying beauty and grace surely has to be the Saint's ride ( Roger Moore as Simon Templar in the TV series)

Attached is an example of the car - just look at those body lines

A fellow speedster owner from South Africa,
Mitch

Robert: and to think that the sexy P1800 came from the same manufacturer as all those boxy Volvo's!

Gordon, have you seen the new Volvos? They arn't boxy or slow. Check out the Speed World Challenge. Eddie

I HAVE to agree with Bruce, not that ANYONE cares at all.

The 53 Studebaker Starlight Coupe IS an absolutely flawless design. My highschool friend's brother had one with an Oldsmobile engine, and later I owned one with the stock 289(?) . The interior was like what I imagined an airplane cockpit to be like, the view over the hood was just wonderful. AND I had the only one still on the road in my town (early Seventies). They rusted very badly in the front skuttle lower front fender area.

Raymond Lowey's design was so good that they kept the basic body shell the same and pretty much tacked various body add-ons to it for the run of the model and then some.

The same design frm the early 50's through to the late 60's I think.

TC

How about one of my favorites, no not the Yugo, a 1932 Packard Dual Cowl Phaeton. Why there's enough room in this automobile to experiment with every position in the Kama Sutra.

How about a replica XKE, hey there's one already...it's called the BMW Z6.
Ron

TC,

The C-K coupe body lasted from 1953 thru 1964 when the last GT Hawk was made. When Studebaker moved to Canada for the 65 and 66 model years they didn't include the Hawks in the Product line. Sad ending for the company. They had more ups and downs of any auto manufacturer. They produced wheeled transport from 1852 to 1966. For many years the longest manufacturing line of wheeled vechicles.

Bruce

The Studebaker was a great car and a unique icon. It's too bad that the company was not able to correct ongoing problems such as body cavities which led to early rust outs. I think many of their problems stemmed from indifference and bad decisions in the board room or at least this is what I gleaned from a video covering the rise and fall of the marque. There is a member of my car club who has a late 50's Hawk and it is one nice automobile.

I heard once on a television show covering design with a capital "D", that clothes, fashion, and auto design followed each other very closely. Tall fins equals shorter skirts and all that kind of stuff.

Evidently one of the many reasons for Studebaker's failure was the design itself. Not only too advanced for the time, but too low in profile. Supposedly you couldn't wear a hat while driving . . . !?

It seems silly now (the whole hat issue was resolved when JFK showed up bare headed for the swearing in thing) but they said that in the 50's it was a big deal. Guys loved hats and wore them in the car!

Just "heard" it on TV, not empirical knowledge, I don't much like hats.

TC

TC,

You'd like them if you had a chrome dome like some of us older guys. The comment about hats in cars I think was attributed to the Chrysler CEO in the late 40's. He felt that their autos should be tall enough
to permit a man or women to wear their hats inside the car, hence the upright boxy Mopars of the late 30's into the 50's. Virgil Exner finally turned them into fin crazy, but rather clean designs by 1957.

Studebaker had some good designs that caught the publics fancy in the 40's and early 50's. Then came the milestone 53's that caused a sensation. Problem was that the Studebaker execs thought that the 4 door sedan would be the seller, not the supurb coupe and hardtop. Bad decision. Everyone wanted the coupe or hardtop. Another error they made was that all the sheet metal and frames were differant on the coupes and sedans. Even the trunk lids and the chrome were different. This is a costly way to produce a car in volume. The front fender rust problem could have been solved by a simple addition of a shield that deflected the mud and moisture. Why they didn't do it is still a mystery to people in the Studebaker Drivers Club to this day. Another
reason why Stude struggled was that Chevy and Ford had a price war in 55 and 56. This devestated the independents like Studebaker and Nash, Hudson. They were forced into mergers with each other to survive. The entire American Auto industry is fascinating history, especially in the 40's and 50's. A Porsche link with Studebaker is somewhat intriging. Stude and Porsche collaborated on designing a small, economical car for Stude. This was in 51 and 52. I've seen photos of the prototype and it was rather plain looking but the mechanicals were interesting. Think it died because of budget constraints by Stude and the Korean War. The small America car was still several years away at that time. The recession of 1958 caused all the auto manufacturers to bring out small cars in 59-61. Also caused me to go in the Army or die of starvation! No jobs to be had.

Bruce

Bruce
Ever notice the thumbnails of ads on ebay for 356B taken from the front with the camera 5 ft off the ground kind of look like Studes? Or are my eyes going.
ed

ED,

Yes, Now that I think about it, they do have some common design styles. Germans would never admit they copied anything though! I had a 55 Studebaker Speedster, it was a one year model. I have read in one of the Porsche books that Porsche made Studebaker drop the name Speedster. I have never heard or read that in any Studebaker history. I think the reason they didn't use Speedster in 56 was they came out with the whole family of "Hawks." There were several models of Hawks, Golden, Silver, Flight, etc. The name Speedster has been used for years by Auto companies to name a sporty model. Auburn, Kissel, Dusenberg are a couple of the prime American examples. I think Porsche was guilty of beating its own drum on that issue.

Bruce

Years ago, a friend of my dad bought a Supercharged Stude Hawk as his last car.......prior to that he had a few Hudson Hornet straight eights. He told me once that the Hudson was always reliable on his run up to his place on Sebago Lake in Maine, where he went every weekend. He "liked to drive fast", so he said, and I took a trip up there with him once after the Maine Turnpike (now I-95) was completed. Once we got onto the turnpike he ran it up around 100mph and held it there for over an hour - like it was nothing new - and that car was as stable as my F150 at 70mph today.

As parts for the Hudson's started to become scarce, he bought a new Studebaker Hawk with a supercharger which, he said, was the only thing he'd tried on the "Sebago Run" that could match his Hornets for comfortable cruising........Kinda wish I got a ride in the Hawk, too, but he later died (he was in his 80's) and the Hawk went with his estate.

Same guy also had several Indian motorcycles - couple of Chiefs, a Scout and one other that I can't recall, and rode them right through his 70's - one cool guy.

Gordon,

The Hudson Hornet was indeed a great top end cruiser. Instead of a straight 8, they had a 300 plus cubic inch 6. With the dual carbs, "Twin H Power", they were the hot wheels in the early 50's, along with the Olds 88's! Hudson had a straight 8 in their Commodore series, love that name. Commodore! There is a Hornet sitting in a truck yard just up the road from me. It keeps calling to me but the wife says, no way. Speaking of that there is a 356 coupe sitting in a gas station right down from the Hudson with a for sale sign on it. It has been there for a year or so, they put it away during the winter and then pull it out in the spring. Think I'll check it out this afternoon, give a report if there are any particulars to give. Usually the guys in the station know nothing about the cars for sale.

Bruce

Yikes! All of this wonderful talk and information about my first favorite car, on the forum dedicated to my second favorite car . . . If anyone is at all interested I found a web site, below:

www.rodnrace.com/rnr/stude.htm

That sells complete (and BEAUTIFUL) fiberglass reproductions of the 53 Stude coupe. (Sort of holding up my end of the replica aspect of this site, if not the Speedster side of things.)

A little pipe dream . . .

My "daily driver" is a VW bodied hot rod; built 327, turbo 350 with shift kit, Detroit Locker rear, LONG ladder bars, etc. It's a survivor car from the local Gasser Wars run at Epping in the 60's/70's. If the title issue wasn't such a huge problem here in Massachusetts, I'd swap bodies in a sec. Of course, there's always my THIRD favorite car, the Henry J, which might be a better swap in that the wheel base is shorter and it has even more of a Gasser heritage than the Stude, which seemed more popular at Bonneville than Bakersfield.

TC

Just got back from looking at the 356 Cpe, brown. California plates last tagged in 84. Talked to the guy in the station about the car. Some local has it. It has a rebuilt 1600 356A engine. Interior isn't too bad, tan leather, glass OK, but surface rust on hood, also hood is kinked, exhaust tips on the rear bumper guards missing. The guy in the garage said it is rusty underneath, It is a 64 356C. $12,000 or best offer. He kind of laughed and hinted that maybe any offer would be accepted. Think I'll walk, no run, away from this one.

Bruce

Good for you. You'll love your new Speedster. I've had my current Speedster for about 7 months and I still admire it still in my garage.

Now, regarding the other cars you mentioned, I personally love the '59 Impalas. I used to have a red two-door before buying my first Speedster. I still miss that car (of course I miss all of the old cars I used to have).

Me too Dave; now you know where my nickname comes from!!....thanks for your kind thoughts. Kirk told me half an hour ago that my chassis and engine are ready, upholstery is done and that the car is waiting for paint, the 3:88 tranny and final assembly. He tells me that they get built fairly quickly and in VS's case I guess practice makes perfect!!

Hi guys; first of all I want to thank you for all the help and advice you've given me in the past few months while searching for a Speedster. I considered many alternatives but opportunity knocked and I was able to fulfill a dream of mine for the past 17 years. Last week I ordered a new Speedster from Kirk at VS and am excited as all get out. I just can't wait to start getting the progress jpegs! It's not going to be anything special, just a stock vintage ivory model, since I'm sort of a traditionalist. Since I ordered the wide fives on it for the sake of original appearance, Kirk is installing a set of wide five front discs on it. It's just a regular 1776 with dual carbs and 3:88 swing axle tranny. I know I'm going to enjoy the heck out of it. I'll post pictures as soon as I get them.

Ok; as promised; I just got these from Kirk.....check them out. He'll be emailing more by Friday; I'll post them as soon as I get them.