On This Day

Friday 20th December 1963

56 years ago

Just two weeks after the announcement was made that the plant would close, all production ceased at Studebaker’s South Bend plants in Indiana, US. The truck, GT Hawk and Avanti lines were closed and anything on them was left in place. The last car off of the line was a Lark designated for Boyer Brothers Motors in Moselm Springs Pennsylvania but instead it ended in the Studebaker Museum in South Bend. This last Studebaker was a Daytona 2-door with an R-2 engine. The shutdown of the plant, whose work force was nearly a quarter African-American, hit that community especially hard. The engine foundry remained open to supply the Canadian plant until the end of the 1964 model year, after which it was also shuttered. The Avanti model name, tooling, and plant space were sold off to Leo Newman and Nate Altman, a longtime South Bend Studebaker-Packard dealership. They revived the car in 1965 under the brand name "Avanti II". They likewise purchased the rights and tooling for Studebaker's trucks, along with the company's vast stock of parts and accessories. Trucks ceased to be built after Studebaker fulfilled its remaining orders in early 1964. There were some '1965' model Champ trucks built in South America using CKD parts ( completely knocked down ). These models used a different grille than all previous Champ models.