For those of you not in the Studebaker cult, this is the mother of all Studebaker performance engines. It’s the Hemi, ZL1, and SOHC Ford of the Studebaker world and because they are as rare as hen’s teeth, when one comes up for sale, it demands big numbers. This one went for $25,000.
The engines were built by Paxton Products for Studebaker back when Andy Granatelli was being hired out to make horsepower and publicity for Studebaker. As is stated in the ad, engines identical to this one powered two Studes to international speed and endurance records with Andy himself behind the wheel.
It’s not the romper, stomper flashy piece that a Hemi is, but put in a light car with the right gearing, this sucker could terrorize the streets with the best of them. There was lots of super tuning done to these motors with respect to balancing and precision machining, but the coolest parts in our book are the dual quad intake manifold and the special Granatelli-only (not repopped) cylinder heads.
This is the ultimate “factory” Studebaker motor. Thanks for the tip Joe Roberts!
