The Studebaker Avanti was a sports coupe built by the Studebaker Corporation of South Bend, Indiana, USA between June 1962 and December 1963. Designed by a team of stylists employed by industrial designer Raymond Loewy, the Avanti was a radical body design based on the Studebaker Lark Daytona chassis. After the closure of Studebaker's factory in December 1964, The Avanti model name, tooling and plant space were sold off to two South Bend Studebaker dealers. They revived a version of the car in 1965 under the brand name "Avanti II" but neither it nor subsequent copies assembled by a succession of entrepreneurs has any valid identification with the Studebaker name. Avanti is Italian for "forward" or "advance." While Jaguar began offering production-car disc brakes in 1957 on the XK150, the Avanti was the first American mass-produced car to feature standard disc brakes. The Avanti's emphasis on safety, with seatbelts available as an option, safety door latches and roll-over protection bar, was also very advanced.
The Avanti's classic design originated in an intense five-week session in a rented house in Palm Springs, California near the home of lead designer Raymond Loewy with the team of Bob Andrews, Tom Kellogg, and John Ebstein. The waist had a coke bottle shape, which held up a thin-section roof with a bubble-back rear window and an integral rollbar. Loewy achieved the look of a rear-drive sports car by replacing the function of a conventional grille with a bottom breathing air intake placed under the front bumper, a styling feature that reached the family sedan in the 1980s with the Ford Taurus The driver looked over an asymmetrical hump in the hood. The cockpit had crash padding, and seating was in four bucket seats. It would be put into production with few changes from the original small-scale model. The unique and classic aesthetics of the car garnered a following, and it consequently lived on in production as a hand-built, custom-order model decades after Studebaker closed its doors.
This exceptional Avanti II has a known history from new having had only 2 owners to this point. The car is in excellent condition throughout and has been stored indoors its entire life. The car has been regularly maintained and treated well by collector owners who use it sparingly on nice sunny days only. The car runs and drives without fault, and can be driven cross country without hesitation. Finished in a nice color combination,with full options including Air, this classic Avanti will be at home on the show field or cruising in style.
