Lines of Influence: The Avanti and How It Grew

An architect friend who's about 15 years my junior recently saw a car like one pictured below on a street here in Boulder and e-mailed, asking "What's an Avanti?"  A good question.  In the spring of 1962, when pre-production prototypes were shown to the press, it seemed like a fresh new idea, a break with the over-chromed, bloated and finned barges common up until right about then.  To industry insiders, it was a last-ditch effort to save Studebaker, initiated by company president Sherwood Egbert and designed by Raymond Loewy's team in secret at a secluded studio in Palm Springs.  That's Loewy in the foreground, with Egbert sitting on the car.  The Avanti project went from approval of the clay model in April 1961 to display of the first cars at the New York Auto Show exactly one year later, with the first production cars rolling off the line in June 1962.  Despite the insane schedule, the team managed to hang onto the goals from the original program.  These included the first caliper disc brakes on an American production car*, the first integrated rollover protection, and engine options which included supercharging.  Perhaps the car still looks fresh because it's so close to the "first impression" sketches; nobody had time to argue about stuff.

To those who were not car-crazy high school or middle school kids in 1963, the Avanti only seems vaguely familiar because of the many cars it influenced.  Some features showed up fairly soon, such as the "Coke bottle" shape of the body in plan view, with a subtle indent between front and rear fenders, with the wheel arches linked by a sharp horizontal crease front to rear.  These items showed up in 1967 on the Camaro and Firebird twins, GM's belated answer to Ford's Mustang. Those cars also echoed the Avanti's shallow, blade-like bumpers, semi-fastback roofline and upswept, tapered tail with short rear overhangs.

In a way, the 1967 Camaro was a Mustang in an Avanti suit; it had the proportions and massing of the Ford, but the handling of form and surface development was much more like the Studebaker. This is especially visible in a comparison of side elevations below. Note that the wheel arches on the Avanti are not concentric with the circles of the wheels; they are rearward-slanting half ovals, leading the eye forward and imparting a sense of movement to the whole composition. They also emphasize the car's "California rake", a nose-down, tail-up attitude inherited from hot rodders.  On the Avanti, there's no grille, just a simple air intake below the bumper, while the Camaro has a conventional oblong grille linking the headlights.  The Avanti's asymmetrical hood bulge forms the instrument binnacle when it crosses the plane of the windshield.  It, like the blade shapes formed into the tops of the fenders, was intended as an aid in aiming the car.  Those blade shapes were suggested by Loewy after he saw a preview of the 1961 Lincoln Continental (see "When the Sixties Really Began" in the archive for 11/18/15).  This is almost comical, as the Lincoln is a composition of straight, parallel lines, and the only straight lines anywhere on the Avanti frame the backup lights...

In their design for the Camaro, GM's design staff produced a sort of smooth jazz version of the Avanti, erasing most of the cool, hipster eccentricities that were a product of the Loewy team's improvisation under pressure.  Some people will prefer the Camaro to the Avanti, but their view is just a reminder of why Kenny G was able to sell more records than, say, John Coltrane.  By the time that '67 Camaro appeared, Studebaker had stopped producing cars, but production of the Avanti had been resumed in 1965 by the Altman brothers, ex-Packard dealers.  Ironically, their version featured a Chevy engine…Production continued into the 1980s, and the Porsche design team credited the Avanti with influencing their 924 and 944.

*Footnote:  Or at least, the first caliper disc brakes that stayed in production during the life of the car.  Chrysler had offered disc brakes on the Town and Country in 1950, but they weren't caliper discs, and Crosley had offered true caliper discs in 1949-50, but went back to drums for the 1951 model year owing to corrosion and maintenance problems with their discs.

Photo credits:

Top and 3rd from top:  Studebaker Corporation

2nd:  car-from-uk.com

Bottom:  blacktopcandys.com