Avanti II 1978 images

When Studebaker abandoned the car business in 1966, two of its own dealers refused to let the Avanti name go with it. This 1978 Avanti II pairs a 350-cid V8 with a four-speed automatic, one of the hand-assembled grand tourers built years after Detroit had already moved on, with every example built to order. Here’s what made this leftover from a canceled company an unlikely survivor for nearly two decades.

1978 Avanti II 350 CID V8 4-Speed Auto

MCF thanks Gateway Classic Cars for the images displayed here.

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Somewhere in a South Bend workshop, a handful of craftsmen kept building a car that Detroit had already declared dead. The Studebaker badge was gone, the factory that spawned it had shuttered its automotive line, yet this fiberglass-bodied grand tourer refused to disappear. Two former Studebaker dealers picked up the tooling, hired back workers who knew the shapes and stresses of every panel, and quietly turned out a trickle of cars each year for buyers who wanted something no assembly line could offer. By 1978, more than a decade after that unlikely relaunch, this particular example rolled out with a 350-cid V8 and a four-speed automatic underneath its unmistakably slippery body. What kept it alive long after its parent company gave up on cars?

The Dealers Who Wouldn’t Let It Die

When Studebaker exited the automobile business in 1966, dealers Nate Altman and Leo Newman refused to let the Avanti name disappear with it. The pair formed the Avanti Motor Corporation, gained access to Studebaker’s original molds and tooling, and began hand-assembling the Avanti II out of the same South Bend facility. Production ran from 1965 all the way to 1983, an unusually long run for a car built by a company with no factory line to speak of.

Bespoke Over Mass-Produced

Because Avanti never chased volume, buyers got a genuinely custom car: their own choice of paint, their own choice of interior materials, built to order rather than pulled off a lot. Later cars did lose some vigor once emissions rules squeezed the available V8 options, but examples like this 1978 with its 350-cid engine still represent the brand at a point when it could deliver real performance alongside its bespoke build process. That combination of scarcity and craftsmanship is exactly what keeps Avanti IIs on collectors’ radars decades later.

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