Raymond Loewy – Driven To Write

You can’t polish a turd, but can you sully a diamond?

1953 Studebaker Commander Starliner. Image: carstyling

_{Editor’s note: This piece was first published in July 2014 as part of DTW’s facelift theme.}

Once, whilst Europe was happy to go on producing the same identical model year after year until the dies got too worn out to function, the United States car manufacturers doggedly changed models every three years, with a facelift every year in between. Thus, any reasonable US car spotter will be able to identify the exact year of a Ford Thunderbird, first by the shape, then by the radiator trim or the rear lamps. Any domestic manufacturer who didn’t Continue reading “Facelifts – Loewy’s 1953 Studebaker”

Continuing our guided tour of the works of Brooks Stevens.

1962 and 1964 Studebaker Lark facelifts: In 1956, Studebaker parted ways with Raymond Loewy, the designer responsible (in name at least) for the creation of most of the Indiana company’s cars of the preceding decades. The reason was not so much dissatisfaction with Loewy’s services, but a lack of money: Studebaker’s sales were in the doldrums and the company simply could not afford him anymore. Styling responsibilities would henceforth lie with its in-house design team, led by Randall Faurot and Duncan McRae.

The compact Lark⁽¹⁾ was McRae and his colleagues’ first design. They ingeniously re-used the rather dated central body section of the company’s existing large Champion model, which had been introduced in 1953. Initially, the Lark sold very well and was wholly responsible for saving Studebaker from bankruptcy, at least for the time being. Sherwood Egbert became CEO of the troubled company at the end of 1960. Having previously worked for the McCulloch company, Egbert had already met Brooks Stevens on a few occasions, so it was to the Milwaukee designer that Egbert would turn to Continue reading “The Milwaukee Magician (Part Four)”