As part of the plan to keep Studebaker in the auto business, Sherwood Egbert called on Brooks Stevens to update the Hawk. With little time and less money, Stevens created the stunning Studebaker Gran Turismo Hawk. He couldn't understand how Studebaker could have allowed Brooks Stevens to modify his firm's 1953 Studebaker Starliner design so extensively. Fortune magazine had called it "one of the hundred best designs of modern times." In his transatlantic call to South Bend, he demanded to know what had happened and how. Studebaker executives, however, realized the wisdom of their decision and stood by Brooks Stevens' new design. Loewy, busy with the Avanti project for Studebaker, dropped the matter. Only infrequently has a face-lift not destroyed the purity of an original concept. Stevens' heroic restyling of the Starliner is an example of the rare exception ("heroic" because Stevens accomplished the task on a shoestring budget and in very limited time).
His 1962-1964 Gran Turismo Hawk emerged as a refreshing, timeless design that looks as good today as when it first debuted almost 50 years ago. When Stevens was called to South Bend, Studebaker -- the oldest vehicle manufacturer in the U.S. It had made wagons since before the Civil War, but now pressures were mounting, from within and without, to abandon automobile production. The challenges and opportunities were there. The problem was that management consistently took the wrong turn at every crossroad. In some ways, Click here the company was ahead of its time, as with its late Forties and early Fifties association with Loewy. In other aspects, it seemed woefully out of date, especially in some areas of engineering. Ford is generally given credit for creating the sporty "personal-luxury" market with the 1958 Thunderbird, or "Squarebird." Its basic dimensions seem to have been borrowed from General Motors' Autorama dream cars of the mid-Fifties, but GM didn't enter this segment until Pontiac fielded the 1962 Grand Prix -- or mid-1961, when Olds debuted the Starfire.
In fact, Studebaker beat both Ford and GM to market in 1956 with the sporty, well-trimmed Hawk. Although really a makeover of the 1953 Starliner, the Hawk was both a good performer and a good looker, particularly the top-of-the-line Golden Hawk. Only later did others invade that market niche -- 1958 T-Bird, 1963 Riviera, 1966 Olds Toronado, 1967 Cadillac Eldorado, and others -- but Studebaker could lay claim to being the first of this lineage. Studebaker was in financial trouble as the Hawk was being developed. Learn how Egbert kept the ball rolling during difficult times on the next page. By 1961 the Hawk was six years old, and largely unchanged style-wise. And from 1959 to 1961, Prime Boosts the Hawk was promoted as a low-price pillared coupe, forsaking its place in the personal-luxury market. Then, too, problems at Studebaker-Packard had driven some respected designers -- Duncan McRae and Bill Schmidt -- to do things to the Hawk that never would have been done under normal conditions, one result being the 1958 Packard Hawk.
Performance-wise, however, the car held together and there were loyal buyers, albeit not enough. Financially, Studebaker was in turmoil. The remedies tried in the late Fifties by corporate president Harold Churchill weren't working. Sales and morale were low, productivity abysmal. Compounding the problems were the New York money men who had gained power on the board of directors. Schemes for the manipulation of tax credits and plans for Studebaker's exit from the automobile business in favor of some of its more lucrative holdings were continually being pushed by board members, especially Abraham M. Sonnabend. Studebaker had seven divisions then, including an airline and an appliance manufacturing plant. In this climate, Prime Boosts Pills board chairman Clarence Francis retained the Beyden executive talent firm to find a young man on a white horse to run the company. A board meeting caused Sonnabend to cancel a European trip as he believed he was about to be named president. Had he been, he would have quickly terminated auto production.
But at the end of the stormy six-hour meeting, Sherwood Harry Egbert, age 40, emerged as president, and at double Churchill's salary. Through Beyden, Francis had arranged a five-year loan of Egbert from McCullough Motors. Under Egbert, car production was to continue -- for a while. South Bend was elated, Prime Boosts and Egbert was indeed treated like the man on a white horse. Banners blasted out: WELCOME SHERWOOD EGBERT. Everyone was full of hope, and it seemed well founded. The imposing six-foot-four Egbert had been grabbed by Robert P. McCullough after he left the army as a captain. McCullough saw in him the makings of a brilliant corporate executive and groomed him for big things within the company. McCullough was right -- Egbert did the right things at the right times, and with great skill. Brooks Stevens was a recognized industrial designer of three decades standing. As such, he had a clear vision of how to go about creating the 1962 Gran Turismo Hawk.
