Hawking for My High School ’64 Studebaker: Part 1

I keep a very detailed spreadsheet of all the cars I’ve owned. Every time I drag something home, I relish the “check-in” process—my ritual of recording the year, make, model, purchase price, cylinder count, and whether it drives. These go into a Microsoft Power BI data visualization model that offers a prediction of what I might buy next. Last time I checked, it forecasted a brown 1987 Volkswagen Quantum for the sum of $2300. While a Choco-Quantum indeed sounds appealing, in a sick sort of way, the model could not predict that I’d reunite with the 1964 Studebaker Gran Turismo Hawk that I drove through high school. I sold that car in order to fund a semester abroad in Australia. When it popped back up on Facebook Marketplace, my brain registered pure joy right before what PowerBI would consider a whopper of a #DIV/0! error.

As soon as I saw the single-picture ad, the panic attack commenced. Regular readers of this column will recall that my hands have been rather full as of late, namely that I am focused on turning an old foundry into a place for car storage. But buying back your old high school ride is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The signficance of the moment hit me hard, so I did something that I rarely do: thought about it for a few days. (When I was 15 years old, all I could think about was how rad this car was.)

About four days later, I realized what needed to be done. On my way to work, I called the Studebaker’s owner. I explained how I had purchased the very same car as a roller when I was 15 years old, got it on the road, and then drove it through high school and part of college.

“What makes you so sure it’s yours?” he asked. “Well…”, I said…

1. The matte black finish, tweaked fender, and perfectly straight hood

When I bought the car for $2500, half of which was under a $5/hr work agreement, the hood was loosely attached and Bondo stalagmites hung from the underside of its bulge. It was also bent at the corners from what I diagnosed as a harrowing latch failure on the highway. When I had the hood off to remove the stuck 259 V-8, its abhorrent condition became apparent. I had a friend drive me out to Goldsboro, North Carolina, where we fished a dusty, matte black NOS hood out of a scorching attic. The old, bent hood was relegated to sled duty the two times it snowed that winter. (We were kids, after all.) The following half-dozen summers we used it as a campfire pit by the lake.

So yes, I know that matte NOS hood.

2. The creased front left fender

I would like to preface the text below with the following disclaimer: I did stupid things, because I was stupid, and it was stupid to do them.

I periodically competed in autocross events in my track-prepped Corolla, which was fun. For whatever reason, I decided it would be a good idea to compete in the Studebaker. Maybe I had become outclassed in the Toyota due to modifications, or maybe the thing was just broken. In any case, a few friends and I drove the Studebaker down to Laurinburg to compete with Tarheel Sports Car Club. With masking tape on the doors indicating our competition number, 85FSP, and a set of wheels from my dad’s Mustang, we set off.

The wheels didn’t fit right at all, not even with the 3/4-inch spacers. Each of the five lugs was barely biting on the stud, and checking their constantly lessening torque required the wheel to come off. So, we diligently retorqued the outer lugs after each run. The inners? Not a chance.

After a handful of rounds—all ending in poor times and cone picker-upperers later asking me about a certain buzzsaw-like noise they heard when I turned left (I didn’t know either)—it was time to head back to Raleigh. Whether it was the monotony of loblolly pine-lined US-1, the drone of the exhaust, the long day in the sun, wisps of carbon monoxide seeping into the cabin, or some combination of the aforementioned, my friend Kellen started nodding off in the passenger seat. The only thing keeping me awake was my car’s ever-worsening front-end shimmy.

Just as I was checking to make sure my copilot was breathing, the shimmy went away accompanied by a punting sound. I looked to the left, where a familiar-looking 17-inch wheel and spacer was rolling past us on the shoulder. Despite recognizing it as mine, I was dumb or panicked enough to hit the brakes, disrupting my Studebaker’s Citroën-esque balancing act and shoving the front left brake drum and bottom of the fender to the pavement in a shower of sparks.

There we were, stopped in the middle of US-1. My free wheel narrowly missed a van before taking out a picket fence. Friends convoying with us assisted in moving the Studabaker out of the road while I chased the wheel, its nuts fortunately still along for the ride between the rim and spacer.

So yes, I know that fender crease.

3. The 2-1/4″ Silvertone exhaust

The 2-1/4-inch Silvertone exhaust I chose to replace my Hawk’s heavily rusted 2-inch dual setup was not cheap, valued at 105 hours of labor at my modest $5/hr wage. Or 37 mowed lawns. (This was before my windfall $7/hr detailing at Saturn of Raleigh.) Ordering this set by phone from Stephen Allen’s, LLC, was my 15-year-old equivalent of buying a single-family home.

To minimize cost, I dug around my parents’ crawlspace and found a pair of Flowmaster 50-series mufflers that my father had rejected for being too quiet. He’d hacked off the mating interfaces with a Sawzall, so they weren’t exactly clean. I had no welding gear, either—that wouldn’t come into my life for another eight months, around the time I got my license.

Alas, I assembled this high-quality stainless steel exhaust with ill-fitting mufflers and hung it all solely with clamps and straps that required constant fettling to keep from asphyxiating my passengers.

So yes, I know that exhaust.

4. The floor shift Borg-Warner Overdrive

When I was legally licensed to drive and could hit the road with the Hawk, it was equipped with the Studebaker Powershift automatic. The transmission shared a lot with the Ford FMX. At the time, the Powershift offered a high degree of manual control for a slushbox, but it was nevertheless heavy and slow.

I don’t remember if a failure or what prompted the changeover to a proper manual transmission, but I managed to pull the complete Borg-Warner three-speed overdrive setup out of a parts car. This particular donor was a desert tan ’62 GT Hawk that had practically rusted in half. In order to facilitate easier removal of the transmission with minimal exposure to snakes and wasps, I hooked the International 856 tractor to the rear of the car and pulled it several inches further away from the front. The floors simply fell away, yielding full access to the bell housing and linkage bolts.

Swapping in the manual ‘box was a bit more delicate. I positioned the car on cinder blocks at a cow lot. There were three Nubian goats running around at that time, and their dung balls mixed with ATF to create a horrifying slurry.

Amid the hot summer of 2002, I installed that transmission and three-pedals on my back. I decided to keep the floor shift rather than steal the column shift stuff from the parts car. That meant adapting a vintage JC Whitney kit that would break when driven aggressively, and I suffered some severe forearm burns on the Silvertone exhaust as I fiddled underneath the car, trying to find any gear to get home.

So yes, I know that transmission. I have the scars to remind me.

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Needless to say, I convinced the seller that this was indeed my old Hawk. We made a deal.

Next weekend, my wife, Romanian street dog, and I are going to head “Down East” with a trailer. This time, when it’s back home, I won’t have to bother updating my spreadsheet.

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