1950 Studebaker Bullet Nose Custom

Scott Cawley’s 1950 Studebaker still wears the polarizing bullet nose that made strangers ask which direction the car was actually driving, but this one skips the trailer-queen treatment most survivors get. An updated suspension and a modern engine swap keep it as a genuine daily driver, seventy years after Studebaker’s gamble on Raymond Loewy’s design became the best-selling year in company history. Read on to see what made the design so divisive in the first place.

Picture rolling up to a stoplight in 1950 in a car so strange-looking that strangers would ask which direction it was actually driving. That was the reception Studebaker’s bullet nose got when it launched, a chrome-plated cone bolted to the middle of a sedan’s face like something borrowed off a fighter plane. Most people assumed a design that polarizing would sink fast. Instead it became the best-selling year in Studebaker’s history. Seventy years later, Scott Cawley’s version of that same strange nose is still turning heads, and he does not trailer it to shows. He drives it to work.

An Idea Too Radical for 1947, Perfect for 1950

The bullet-nose concept actually came out of Raymond Loewy’s design studio years before it reached production, first pitched for the 1947 model and passed over in favor of a more conservative design from Virgil Exner. By 1949, the Big Three had rolled out all-new postwar models that leveled the playing field, and Studebaker finally greenlit designer Bob Bourke’s bullet nose for 1950. The result was a chrome-plated central nose cone that looked more like aircraft hardware than automotive trim, paired with wraparound glass that eliminated the traditional C-pillar entirely for genuinely panoramic rear visibility. Exner’s own design, which Studebaker used instead for 1947 through 1949, played it safe with a conventional grille and hood line, which only made the eventual bullet-nose gamble look more radical by comparison once it finally reached showrooms.

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The Man Behind the Nose Cone

Raymond Loewy was not a typical Detroit stylist; he ran an independent industrial design consultancy responsible for reshaping the Coca-Cola bottle, the Lucky Strike cigarette pack, and Greyhound’s streamlined buses, and Studebaker contracted his studio rather than relying purely on an in-house design department, an unusual arrangement for the era. Bob Bourke was the staff designer inside Loewy’s studio actually credited with executing the final bullet-nose shape, working under Loewy’s broader creative direction but doing the hands-on work that turned the concept into a producible car. Loewy’s design philosophy, often summarized as MAYA, most advanced yet acceptable, shaped nearly every project his studio touched, and the bullet nose sat about as close to the outer edge of that acceptability line as any American car of its decade.

Champion or Commander, the Bullet Nose Came Either Way

Studebaker sold the bullet nose across both its lower-priced Champion line and the larger, more powerful Commander line, meaning buyers could get the controversial face on anything from an economical six-cylinder runabout to a more substantial eight-cylinder sedan. That dual availability is part of why sales climbed so fast; the bullet nose was never a halo-only design reserved for one expensive trim, it was the face of nearly the entire Studebaker lineup that year. A buyer walking into a Studebaker showroom in 1950 could option the bullet-nose face on a stripped-down Champion business coupe or a fully loaded Commander Land Cruiser sedan, meaning the polarizing styling touched nearly every price point Studebaker offered.

The Sales Numbers Nobody Expected

Studebaker’s gamble worked: sales exploded 160 percent over 1949 to 343,000 units, an all-time high the company never matched again. Over its two-year run, the bullet nose pulled in 611,729 buyers total, the strongest postwar stretch Studebaker ever had. That success did not stop the jokes, though. That single model year alone accounted for a meaningful share of Studebaker’s total postwar production, a peak the independent automaker would spend the rest of the decade trying, and failing, to recapture as the Big Three’s advertising budgets grew far larger than its own.

“Which Way Is It Going?” — The Joke That Followed It Home

“Which way is it going?” became the running gag at the time, and the design earned about as much ridicule as admiration from contemporary reviewers and cartoonists. Looking back, the bullet nose reads as an early, almost literal expression of the era’s broader obsession with aviation-inspired styling, a theme other manufacturers would chase more subtly through tailfins and jet-inspired trim throughout the following decade rather than a single nose cone dropped straight onto a sedan’s face. Cartoonists of the era had a field day with the design, and the running joke followed Studebaker for years afterward, even as the company kept variations of the wraparound-glass theme in its lineup well past the original bullet-nose cars themselves.

What’s Actually Under That Chrome Nose

Studebaker’s Champion line in this era typically ran a 169.6 cubic-inch L-head six making around 85 horsepower, while the larger Commander offered a bigger six with more grunt for buyers who wanted it. Cawley’s example skips the factory drivetrain entirely, carrying a modern engine swap chosen purely to keep the car reliable enough for daily use rather than to chase originality points at a judged show. Neither factory engine was fast by later muscle car standards, but both were considered reliable, easy to service workhorses in their day, which is part of why so many bullet-nose Studebakers survived long enough in barns and driveways to become restoration projects decades later.

Why So Few Bullet Noses Survive Today

Surviving examples are scarcer than the sales numbers might suggest, partly because Studebaker wound down its automotive operations by 1966, leaving reproduction parts and factory-correct trim increasingly hard to source. Rust around the wraparound rear glass seals and the chrome nose trim itself, expensive and difficult to replicate correctly, have taken a steady toll on unrestored cars over seven decades, pushing many survivors either into museum-quality restorations or into the scrap pile with nothing in between. Studebaker’s own dealer network shrank steadily through the 1950s as the company struggled against the Big Three, meaning replacement parts and factory service literature became scarce even before the last cars rolled off the line.

Daily-Driving a 70-Year-Old Design

Most surviving bullet-nose Studebakers live the trailer-queen life, rolled out for shows and tucked away otherwise. Cawley’s build goes the other direction, an updated suspension for modern ride quality and a swapped-in engine mean this one actually gets driven, not just displayed. Turning a genuinely divisive piece of 1950 design into a car you can rely on every day is its own kind of tribute to the original gamble. Cawley’s choice to actually use the car rather than store it reflects a broader shift among classic car owners who would rather put real miles on a beloved design than watch it slowly deteriorate in a climate-controlled garage.

What a Bullet Nose Is Worth Now

Solid, driver-quality 1950 Studebaker Champions and Commanders typically trade somewhere in the $15,000 to $30,000 range today depending on condition and originality, with well-executed daily-driver builds like Cawley’s often commanding a premium for usability over strict originality. Buyers shopping this corner of the hobby tend to want a genuine conversation piece they can actually use, not a trailer queen, which is exactly the niche a car like this fills. Documented, well-photographed builds like Cawley’s tend to draw extra attention at cruise-ins specifically because so few bullet-nose Studebakers get driven regularly. Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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