Studebaker's First Customer

In the spring of 1962, Rodger Ward crossed the yard of bricks at Indianapolis for the second time as a winner. Studebaker, then in the final stretch of developing its most ambitious car in a generation, decided he should have the first one off the line.

The Avanti was supposed to save Studebaker. Raymond Loewy's team had sketched the entire car in a rented Palm Springs house over about six weeks, and the fiberglass body — a first for the company — was meant to leapfrog Detroit's sheet metal on looks alone. It very nearly did. What it could not leapfrog was its own supply chain: the outside contractor molding those fiberglass panels could not build them fast enough or straight enough, and Studebaker's promised delivery dates slipped for months. Ward, announced as the Avanti's first owner before a driveable example existed, found out what every early Avanti customer found out — the car was worth the wait, but there was a wait.

When his car finally arrived, Ward kept it. It stayed in the family for decades, passing to his son, who held onto it as a piece of his father's career rather than a used car to be moved along. It eventually came up through RM Sotheby's, and the current owner — only the third in the car's life — acquired it in 2019, then showed it well enough to take a Designer's Choice Award at the Benedict Castle Concours.

Studebaker didn't survive the decade. The Avanti, and the small handful of cars carrying a story like this one's, did.