Studebaker President Coupe 1955 images

Studebaker restyled its 1955 President to compete with Cadillac and Lincoln, but the real story is hiding in the engine bay. A quiet running change partway through the model year gave later cars more horsepower than earlier ones, with no visible way to tell them apart. Here is what changed, and why only 24,665 were ever built.

The premier vehicle of the Studebaker line up for 1955 is the President. The coupe featured here is powered by a 259 CID V8 and the engine Â is coupled to a three speed transmission with overdrive.

Our thanks to Gateway Classic Cars for the images displayed here.

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Studebaker was running out of time in 1955, squeezed by the Big Three and desperate to look like it belonged in the same conversation as Cadillac and Lincoln. Its answer was a heavily restyled lineup topped by the President, wrapped in a larger front bumper and a grille so massive it looked borrowed from a much bigger car. Underneath that new face sat an engine with a quiet mid-year secret: a running change partway through the model year that gave later cars noticeably more power than the ones built just months earlier. Most buyers never knew the difference existed. What actually changed under the hood, and when?

A Grille Built to Compete With Cadillac

For 1955, Studebaker leaned hard into the personal luxury car trend sweeping the industry, restyling the President with a larger front bumper and a substantial chrome grille meant to signal status at a glance. The lineup spread across five body styles, including a Deluxe Sedan, State Series Coupe, State Series Hardtop, State Series Sedan, and the State Series Speedster Hardtop, all riding on a 120.5-inch wheelbase for the coupe and hardtop convertible variants.

The Horsepower Bump Hardly Anyone Noticed

The President’s 259.2-cubic-inch V8 ran a 7.50:1 compression ratio through four-barrel carburetion and dual exhaust outlets, a configuration exclusive to the President within Studebaker’s lineup. Here’s the detail that gets lost in most spec sheets: after January 3, 1955, a running change bumped output to 185 horsepower at 4,500 rpm with 258 lb-ft of torque at 2,800 rpm, meaning a President built in February had more muscle than one built the previous November, without a single visible change to tell them apart.

A Rare Survivor From a Turning Point

Studebaker built only 24,665 examples of the President for 1955, a modest number even by the standards of the era, which makes surviving coupes like this one a genuine rarity today. The car represents a company fighting hard to stay relevant against much larger rivals, right before Studebaker and Packard merged the following year in a last attempt to compete.

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