If you look at the car as an art form
then there's little doubt the 1951 Studebaker Champion coupe is more
Picasso than Monet. It's about as subtle as a kick in the shins.
Closer to art deco than any practical form of transport should be.
It's a vehicle of contradictions. It is
long and large, but has only a bench seat. The back looks more like
the front. In fact if you took the headlights out and placed them
where the taillights are, the car would look more sensible.
Why? Well the boot is longer than the
bonnet. Or at least it looks that way although we did not break out
the tape measure to make sure.
Perhaps the coupe's primary redeeming
feature is that it's no where near as off-the-wall as another variant
on the same the same theme: The Studebaker Starlight coupe that
featured a wrap-around window system that gave a fantastic panoramic
view ... out the back. It's no wonder the car's critics were apt to
ask, `which way is it going?'
For all it's nuances, the 1950-51
Studebaker `bullet nose' models gave the South Bend, Indiana maker a
point of difference from the other US makers. No one else produced
anything that looked similar to the radical Champion or Commander
bullet nose cars. It seems having a bullet nose apparently
inspired by a WW2 Lockheed fighter aircraft was not enough. While
the Commander four door sedans were relatively conservative, the
coupes not only got the treatment up front but also down back.
The business coupe featured here was
designed for traveling salesmen. Hence the single bench seat that
would take three people and the large boot for carrying samples or
stock. The 1951 Champion coupe was a face
lift of the all important 1950 model that saw the introduction of the
bullet nose Studebakers. Studebaker had a head start over most other
manufacturers after the end of WW2.
In-house designers were only
allowed to work on war projects during the war, but Studebaker
designs came from Raymond Loewy, whose New York design studio was
contracted to Studebaker, but not part of the company. So Studebaker
was able to get going faster after WW2 with modern designs and these
hit the streets in 1947. The 1950 bullet nose models were the major
face lift of these cars. The Paris-born Loewy was interviewed by
Science and Mechanics in its August 1950 edition and talked about the
design of cars of the future.
What we, in the styling department
of Studebaker and the workrooms of Raymond Loewy Associates, have in
mind is automotive design that expresses motion, even when the
vehicle is at a standstill, with lines suggesting the eagerness of
the machine to travel fast and far, he said.
Talking specifically about the
bulletnose cars, Loewy told the Australian Monthly Motor Manual in
December 1949, `We aimed for the light, fast impression of an
aeroplane. We wanted to break up the box-like appearance that has
been common on past-war cars. If we can give the cars a feeling of
motion and speed we'd have succeeded in going directly against the
current trend. The car now cuts through the air like an aeroplane.
That aircraft is supposedly the
twin-engined P38 Lockheed Lightning. While the bulletnose theme was
controversial then it worked, for a short time, and Studebaker
Champion and Commander sales leapt. But, other manufacturers did not
follow the design cues advanced by Loewy and Studebaker. By 1953 the
bullet nose was dead in the water.
Fast forward to 2009 and the bullet
nose Studebakers, in Australia are invariably show-stoppers at car
displays ahead of of luminaries such as the iconic 1957 Chevrolet and
Ford Thunderbird. There are a couple of reasons for this: rarity as
there are so few bulletnose cars here and secondly the simply
outrageous design. While the Commander variants are proportional the
Champion cars are unique there is nothing else like them on the
road viewed from the front or back, if you can tell the difference,
that is. In 1951 there were just 3763 business coupes manufactured in
three different trim levels.
These cars are at the forefront of the
wonderful car designs of the 1950's that also gave us cars with fins
bigger than Jaws, twin headlamps either stacked or side-by-side, and
an exuberance and flair which makes this decade of cars as
interesting as any in the history of the automobile. The 1950 Champion came with a 169.6
cubic inch six cylinder engine connected to a three speed manual
transmission on the steering column. The 1951 model received a
Studebaker 232 cubic inch V8, but retained the three-on-the-tree
transmission.
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