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.

A Studebaker Chassis Under a New Badge

The Avanti II carried over much of its underlying engineering from the original Studebaker Avanti, including running gear sourced largely from GM after Studebaker’s own production wound down. Fiberglass body panels, hand-laid rather than stamped, meant every Avanti II left the shop with the kind of panel-fit variation mass production usually irons out — a quirk collectors have come to treat as part of the car’s charm rather than a flaw to correct.

Two Men Who Refused to Let a Good Design Die

Nathan Altman and Leo Newman, the Studebaker dealers who bought the tooling and rights, weren’t car engineers by trade — they were businessmen who believed the Avanti’s distinctive shape deserved to keep rolling regardless of what happened to the company that built it. Their gamble kept a genuinely different American design alive through two more decades of the industry’s most turbulent years.

A Production Run Measured in Dozens, Not Thousands

Where a mainstream coupe might see tens of thousands of copies built in a single model year, Avanti II output was measured in the low hundreds annually at best. That scarcity wasn’t a manufacturing limitation so much as a business model — each car was essentially built to order, which kept volume low but also kept the brand’s reputation for genuine customization intact through ownership changes and shifting emissions rules.

Weathering the Malaise Era Better Than Most

The mid-to-late 1970s were brutal for anything wearing a V8 badge, as emissions equipment and detuned compression ratios sapped horsepower across the entire industry. A 1978 Avanti II with its 350-cid engine wasn’t immune to that trend, but the car’s low weight relative to its wheelbase and its hand-built driveline tuning let it feel livelier than the raw horsepower figures alone would suggest.

An Interior Built Like Custom Furniture

Because every Avanti II was ordered rather than pulled off a lot, buyers picked their own leather grades, carpet colors, and trim combinations the way a custom furniture buyer would choose fabric swatches. That level of personalization was rare for any American car by the late 1970s, let alone one built in such small numbers by a company with no assembly line in the conventional sense.

Why Restorers Treat These Differently Than Detroit Iron

Sourcing parts for an Avanti II means working with a smaller, more specialized supplier network than a typical GM or Ford muscle car restoration, since so much of the car — fiberglass body, unique trim, low-volume mechanical components — was never shared with a mass-market platform. Owners who take one on tend to become deeply networked with fellow Avanti enthusiasts rather than relying on the broad aftermarket that supports more common classics.

A Grand Tourer, Not a Drag Strip Regular

Unlike the muscle cars built around the same era for straight-line speed, the Avanti II was conceived as a grand tourer — a car meant to cover long distances in comfort with a distinctive shape turning heads along the way. That mission shaped everything from its seating position to its relatively soft suspension tuning, setting it apart from contemporaries chasing quarter-mile bragging rights.

Collector Interest That Keeps Growing

As more mainstream 1970s coupes fade from collector consciousness, cars with a genuine story — low production, hand-built construction, a design pedigree tracing back to its original creator — tend to hold and even grow their appeal. The Avanti II occupies exactly that niche: rare enough to be a genuine find, distinctive enough to be instantly recognizable, and different enough from anything Detroit’s major players were building to remain a conversation piece decades later.

A Name That Outlasted the Company That Coined It

The Avanti nameplate itself outlived not just the original Studebaker company but two subsequent ownership groups after Altman and Newman eventually sold the operation, with various owners continuing limited production into the 1980s and beyond under evolving specifications. That kind of brand persistence, surviving multiple corporate changes while the underlying design stayed recognizably the same, is almost unheard of among low-volume American specialty cars.

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