The Studebaker Avanti was a sports coupe originally built by Studebaker Corporation of South Bend, Indiana,
between June of 1962 and December of 1963.
Designed by a team of stylists employed by industrial designer Raymond Loewy, the Avanti was all new on the surface and a radical design. The Studebaker management felt that the company needed a product that would boost the slipping image of its name in order to survive, so they commissioned the development of an exotic sports car in 1961. Avanti is Italian for "forward" or "advance," and the car lived up to its name. It was one of the most remarkable cars to come out in 1963. In its time, the Avanti aroused a lot of attention, and it still does today.
The Avanti design looked very modern and was a trend-setter. The inside of it was inspired by aircraft, with overhead rocker switches which controlled lights and ventilation, a padded interior with full bucket seats and fancy red-illuminated dials.
For safety and rigidity reasons a "safety steel arch" (roll bar)was fitted behind the doors, to protect the inhabitants from decapitation in accidents where the car landed on its head (the fiberglass hull itself offered virtually no protection at all).
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Studebaker offered the Avanti with a standard Jet-Thrust R1 V8, but if you wanted more, it was available. The most common option was the supercharged Jet-Thrust R2 engine. This engine featured Andy Granatelli's Paxton supercharger that offered 290 hp instead of 240. It increased the Avanti's top speed, and 0-60 mph (0-96 kph) acceleration was brought down to 7.3 sec.
During the fall of 1962, on August 14th, the prototype R-3 (299 cid) driven by Andy Granatelli set several land speed records with the top speed of 168.15 mph (270.61 km/h) for the Flying Mile. This Avanti was later modified into the Due Cento for the 1963 Bonneville runs in which Granatelli set or broke 34 U.S. land speed records in an R-3 Avanti. He reached a record speed of 170.78 mph (274.84 km/h), which allowed Studebaker to proudly proclaim it the "World's Fastest Production Car".
