1964 Studebaker Gran Turismo Hawk - One Rare Bird

Occasionally our New Year's Resolutions force us to keep them. Back in January I vowed to blog  about cars I don't really like or find all that interesting and to help me keep that resolution, this popped up on my Facebook Marketplace feed recently. It's a 1964 Studebaker Gran Turismo Hawk and despite it being a what some construe as a personal luxury car not to mention a coupe, two types of cars I adore, I'd never think of blogging about one of these were it not for my trying to be a better, more balanced car-blogger. So, away I go. 

Sadly, save for my quickly downloading these harried pictures, the ad disappeared in a blink of my eye before I could fully digest the little info posted about it aside from the seller claiming "everything was there". If they say so. These are not catalog cars - meaning anything you'd need for it is not available in a catalog or on-inline. And from the looks of it, despite what they said, this looks like it'll need a lot. 

This Studebaker Hawk is part of a series of semi-sporty looking Studebaker coupes, the first of which technically date back to a very handsome, almost General Motors like 1951 concept or show car. Some some decree these as the first personal-luxury car although that's debatable at least to the extent of whatever a "personal-luxury car" is defined as. The term itself is an oxymoron seeing that there was never anything personal about a personal-luxury car given they could seat, with varying degrees of comfort, up to six passengers. 

Seriously, though, if the four-passenger Ford Thunderbird didn't appear until 1958, a vehicle just as many give credit to as the first personal luxury car, the argument holds at least some validity. Although, of course, given that this vehicle type is all but extinct today, the point is all but mute.  

This being a 1964 Hawk, it's full name is "Gran Turismo Hawk" and is one, ahem, rare bird. In a world where it had to compete against the Ford Thunderbird, Buick Riviera, and to some extent the Chevrolet Corvette and Jaguar XKE, the expensive and quirky styled Hawk sold poorly; only an estimated 200,000 where sold in fourteen years of production. A struggling Studebaker ended production of these  in December '63 when they closed their South Bend, Indiana factory. The financially ailing company moved to Hamilton, Ontario where they made only one car, a four-door sedan they called "Lark". Studebaker closed its doors for good in 1966 and that was a shame, too. Studebaker had been around as a company since 1852; first as a manufacturer of wagons, carriages, buggies and harnesses. They first moved into automobile manufacturing in 1904. 

Frankly, save for this fiendish front end, there's a lot to like about this car but let's be certain, it's no '63 Buick Riviera. It's not even a 1958 Ford Thunderbird, not that I think those overwrought elephants on balloon tires are really anything to write home about. If you think this grill looks like the grill off of a then current Mercedes-Benz, you're not alone. First appearing on 1956 models, it was literally a Mercedes knockoff; even back then anything "Mercedes-Benz" was deemed elegant, glamorous, luxurious and the embodiment of class. It's a styling doo-dad that, in my opinion, looks completely out of place and fusses up what's otherwise a fairly cohesive design. 

Oh, but it had gotten worse. Come 1957, Hawks got, wings, err, bolt-on tailfins.  At least our '64 here benefits from a 1961 update that had designers ditching the damn things. The tops of these rear fenders still look somewhat tail-fin like though, the pointless chrome slathering doing them no favors either but these cars do look so much better than the 1957-1961 models; at least from back here.  Again, that grill. 

It's not all a total wash, though. This gigantic V-8 engine, which displaces all of 289 cubic-inches, no, it's not a Ford engine, got rave reviews for its stoutness and reliability. Overbuilt to near extremes, legend has it Studebaker engineers built it so well because they planned compression ratios reaching as high as 13:1 what with anticipation of stratospheric octanes for gasoline first developed during World War II becoming the norm. That never happened, of course, but these engines were ready for it if it did happen and were touted as being all but bulletproof. 

I've seen the occasional Hawk at car shows (gosh, remember them?) in the past and their owners always seem to be folks who are more into their car above and beyond appreciation of automobiles in general. That's fine and all. Sort of like how some people are Corvette and Porsche fans, for instance, and are not necessarily "car-people". In any event, if I find the ad again I'll see if they have any more information about it and post the listing too.