Studebaker had been dead for three years when this Car and Track test took place. The car, an Avanti II, had roots that dated back to 1962 and had been in and out of production…Studebaker ceased Avanti production in 1963, and had picked back up courtesy of two former Studebaker dealers, Nathan Altman and Leo Newman. They had bought the rights to the name, design, parts and a partial ownership of the former South Bend, Indiana plant and until 1982, built Avanti IIs with the help of Chevrolet, where they sourced engines and later, after the cache of Studebaker Lark chassis had dried up, Chevrolet G-body chassis.

A fiberglass two-seater with a supercharged 327 V8 that handled, looked unique and offered a driver-first field of view from the command chair…sounds suspiciously like a Corvette to you? Avantis weren’t slouches, but they were catastrophically expensive. You’d have to plonk down $7,000 to order one and you’d have to wait until the South Bend plant built your car by hand. But as you’ll see in the video below, what you did get was worth every last red cent.

(Yes, I know about the video quality. Not much I can do about that!)