Word: avanti
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Whether Egbert's absence proves temporary or permanent, his reign at Studebaker has produced controversies as well as cars. Egbert balks at the slightest hint that Studebaker might eventually withdraw from automaking. His radically styled Avanti sports car, tooled up at a cost of about $25 million, is a failure. Though Egbert predicted that at least 10,000 a year would be sold, the nine-month total is only 2,083. "If the Avanti had made it," says a former Studebaker staffer, "Egbert would have been a genius...
Egbert also has to live down some mishaps from the '63 model year. Foremost among them was the longnose, short-tail Avanti sports car, which Egbert intended as his answer to the Thunderbird. An incredible series of production snafus involving its Fiberglas body delayed the Avanti's debut by six months; Egbert had confidently predicted 10,000 sales of the '63 Avantis-at about $5,000 each-but only 1,743 have moved. Similarly hurt was the sales potential of another Egbert innovation, the Wagonaire station wagon with a sliding roof; at the last minute, Studebaker discovered...
...York World's Fair next April, Ford will introduce a four-passenger sports car that will cost less than $2,500 (v. about $4,500 for the Chevrolet Corvette and Studebaker Avanti, already on the market); it will have the long hood and short rear-end characteristic of Britain's top-selling sports cars. Chevrolet expects to be in the showrooms late next spring with a rear-engine sports car built on the low-priced Corvair chassis with a sleek, sloping rear end (called a fastback in Detroit). By then, the aggressive Pontiac Division also intends...
Biggest headache of all has been the Avanti, the hot, handsome sports car that is the pet project of Studebaker's dynamic President Sherwood Egbert, 42. Though initial orders suggest that Studebaker could well sell 15,000 1963 Avantis, production has been held to fewer than 500 a month by the difficulties of getting the various parts of the car's fiber-glass body to fit snugly together. Egbert hopes soon to open an Avanti body assembly line in South Bend so as not to have to rely solely on an outside supplier to both make and assemble...
...Bird Trend. A distinctive look that may take over once the T-bird roof has run its course is the convex curve from roof to rear bumper found this year on Chevrolet's new Corvette Sting Ray and Studebaker's red-hot Avanti. Detroit jargon calls this the "fastback"; it is actually a revival of a style of the 1940s...