Studebaker was split into two separate product lines for 1956: the Hawks and the family sedans. The Hawks get all the glory but the sedans have an interesting story, too.

The 1953 Studebaker was one of the most beautiful American cars ever produced, but by 1956 it was time for the carmaker to move on. In the age of planned obsolescence, consumers demanded the new. The coupe was brilliantly repackaged as the Hawk family sports car for ’56 (see our feature here), but at the same time, the sedans received a clever makeover that doesn’t get nearly as much attention.

The Hawk redesign, led by Bob Bourke, who was responsible for the 1953 original, was performed for Studebaker-Packard at significant expense. But for the two-door and four-door family sedans, the company called on Vincent Gardner, a veteran freelance designer then based in the Detroit area. Gardner’s extensive resume included working alongside Gordon Buehrig to clay-model the Cord 810, and in the ’40s he served under Raymond Loewy at Studebaker before striking out on his own.

President Classic 

It’s said that Gardner was not a great illustrator with pen and paper, but he was an expert fabricator and a true artist in modeling his ideas in clay or fiberglass. “Vince could do anything with his hands,” Bourke remembered years later. “He was pretty much a loner, but when fired up he put roller skates on his feet . . . He worked like hell.” Gardner created smart new front-end and rear-end treatments for the existing sedan body shell, and as Bourke recalled it, when Gardner presented the bill for his services, it came to just $7,500.

The sedan line for ’56 consisted of four models: Champion, Commander, President, and Studebaker’s four-door flagship, the President Classic. All rode on the same carried-over chassis with 116.5-in wheelbase except for the President Classic, which shared its 120.5-in wheelbase with the Hawk coupes. An aging L-head 185.6 six with 101 hp was standard in the Champion, while a 259 CID V8 powered the Commander. Presidents got the 289 CID V8 in 195 hp, 210 hp, or 225 hp tune. While the styling was new for ’56, the hardware underneath advanced only in details.

Champion Two-Door Sedan

In those days. the Studebaker lineup covered a lot of ground with limited product variety. At $1,884 for a two-door Sedanet, the Champion faced off against Ford and Chevy’s base models, while the $2,489 President Classic was squarely in the Pontiac price bracket. The South Bend automaker’s slogans that year included “the big news in the low-priced field” and “craftsmanship with a flair.” The latter phrase reminds us of Vince Gardner’s contribution, though the ad writers were probably unaware of it.

While the sporty Hawks are so celebrated by enthusiasts today, the sedans actually provided the bulk of the sales in the Hawk years, not surprisingly. The top movers in ’56 were the Champion and Commander four-doors, contributing roughly half the volume. But in total production the company slipped badly in 1956 to less than 70,000 units, far under the company’s break-even point. In the fall of 1958, the troubled automakr would get a breather, if only a temporary one, with the launch of the compact Lark—yet another clever repackaging of the aging Studebaker platform.

President Classic