(One of Dad’s concept cars- the Tesla electric car of 1958!)
We were car people- in Detroit, of Detroit, the Fathers all had auto contracts with their companies that included a new car every year. We had a flood of new vehicles through the suburbs, and we were quite opinionated about all of them. “Knowledgeable consumers,” I guess you would say, since what the family drove- and what we were about to driving ourselves, determined your caste and status.
I had the Sports Car Club of America badge on the grill of the 1973 Chevy Caprice Classic for the years I owned it- it was Raven’s from the early ‘fifties, back when he wanted to drive something as hot as the A-1 Skyraider he flew in the Naval Reserves at NAS Grosse Isle.
He was not alone. Here is an example: It was not unusual to come home from school to find a first-year-of-production 1954 Corvette flanked by a couple other exotics. The Corvette belonged to “Uncle” Bob- he was on the design team that brought Harley Earl’s idea from concept car to reality. Originally designed as a show car for the 1953 Motorama display at the New York Auto Show, it generated enough interest that to GM made the decision to sell to the public. To keep costs down, GM executive Robert F. McLean mandated off-the-shelf mechanical components, and used the chassis and suspension from the 1952 Chevy sedan.
The Vette sat next to the 1952 Ferrari Mexico Coupe. I don’t know who owned it the exotic beauty- one of the guys who was still in the AMC design shop. They were built exclusively for the 1952 Carrera Panamericana race in Mexico – which was one of the most deadly races in the world. I wish I could ask Raven who it was. I remember listening to an intricate story about differential fluid in which the men were nodding earnestly. One of these Ferraris just went for several million bucks at auction.
And, of course, next to them both was a 1963 Studebaker Avanti:
Some good pals still have one of these quirky classics in their garage Up North. Dad had one back in the day for a two-week “evaluation” when they were new- production ran from June 1962 through December 1963. Studebaker called their sleek car “America’s Only 4 Passenger High-Performance Personal Car!” in the sales literature, and the model was developed at the direction of the automaker’s president, Sherwood Egbert. They combined safety and elegance and performance- a little taste of what was going to come in the golden age of modern Detroit iron.
The two real sports cars were nearly a decade old, and were a taste of what was to come in the automotive world. In fact, the production run for the Avanti may date this recollection to the summer of 1963. The guys may have come over to check out the offering that was very cool but could not save the Studebaker marque. After years of trouble the company merged with the legendary Packard Motors, in 1954.
Hudson-Rambler president George Mason had his eye on both companies, but in the end they all went down. The Studebaker South Bend plant ceased production on December 20, 1963, and the last Studebaker automobile rolled off the Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, assembly line on March 16, 1966. The Studebaker, Cord, Auburn and Duesenberg companies remind me that “Detroit” was actually an arc of assembly and fabrication plants that stretched from the Motor City through Ohio and into Little Detroit: the great motoring state of Indiana.
Heck, I belong to the Hoosier AMC Club, not the one in Michigan. They are passionate people, and great friends.
(1933 Duesenberg SJ Coup. They could be had for a song after World War II when new cars became available again.)
Dick Teague, Dad’s boss in the styling shop at AMC collected Duesenbergs- he started after the war when some real gems that had been flogged through the War when there were no civilian vehicles produced came on the market. Mom and Dad drove a 1936 Model A with a drop top out to Detroit from Borrklyn when they came to work at Ford’s in 1948, and I still remember when they sold their first new car- the iconic 1948 Ford- to a kid down the block.
Chicago documentary producer Scott Craig did an account of the last days of a proud company as Studebaker succumbed to the implacable forces of the market, and the unions and the economy of scale. His Peabody Award-winning special, “Studebaker: Less Than They Promised,” brings a human face to what all of us who saw the institutions that put bread on the table die still feel. That includes the once magnificent city of Detroit.
At the time we had a Rambler Ambassador Station Wagon and the Rambler American compact sedan as the second car.
I am confident that it was the exposure to the real sports cars that convinced Dad to buy the 343 Javelin a couple years later, which considering what I did out on Woodward in Bloomfield Hills in that Charger 440 R/T to be sort of curious.
But we were car people, after all. It is what we did.
Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303