While the ad above may have debuted in '61, the car is a '62. '62 was an important year for the Hawk as Brooks Stevens gave it a much needed makover. The original Raymond Lowey design was a landmark in '53, but through the years Studebaker had added not very attractive tailfins and in general compromised the design, plus it was getting quite dated. Stevens fixed all that on a very tight budget and the revised Hawk lasted through the end of Studebaker's American production at the beginning of the '64 model year.

When I was small an aunt of mine had the same Hawk GT pictured: black with red bucket seats and a four speed transmission, a very pretty car.

Swing axles were used by a variety of manufacturers for decades. Mercedes had them by the mid ‘30s, and Alfa used them as well in the pre-war and immediate post-war period. The design has way too much camber change but this isn’t a huge problem with very narrow tires which is why it worked on cars of that era.

Mostly swing axles were used by manufacturers of rear engine cars as it was the cheapest possible way to make an independent rear suspension, which is required on a rear engine car (excepting a deDion suspension which is more complex and expensive). In addition to VW and Corvair, other manufacturers of cars with swing axles at the rear included Porsche, NSU, Tatra, Renault, Alpine, and Skoda. Borgward, Pontiac and Triumph used them on front engined cars - the original Tempest used a Corvair derived transaxle and rear suspension. All of these cars share the nasty trait of a swing axle rear end, which is that if the driver brakes sharply in a corner there is a good chance the car will try to spin. Used properly, this can aid in maneuvering the car in a corner which is one reason the Porsche 356 was so quick on tight courses. Used improperly by an uninformed driver it results in a spin.

The first generation of Corvair was actually well engineered for a rear engine, swing axle car, certainly way better than anything from VW or Renault. Chevy was smart enough to make it low and have a low center of gravity and a fairly wide track. By the standards of the day it wasn’t dangerous, but it did handle very differently from any other Chevy; a driver who didn’t bother to learn this could get into a lot of trouble. Many owners also ignored Chevy’s recommended tire pressures which were much lower in the front than rear, and were critical for proper handling.

The second generation Corvair introduced in ‘65 was vastly improved by a completely new four-joint independent rear suspension. Many critics felt it to be the best handling American sedan made, and it certainly had the most sophisticated rear suspension of any American car outside of the Corvette. The Corvair was expensive to make as it had many parts not shared with other GM cars. Chevy tried to make up for this by promoting the Corvair as a sporty car - one reason they dropped the wagon, van and pickup variants after ‘64 - and let the Chevy II do battle with the Falcon and Valiant as an economy car. The ‘65 also had an all new and very beautiful body - arguably some of the best design GM did during an era when Bill Mitchell as head of GM design had pulled the company out of the Harley Earl tailfins and chrome ‘50s era and into a way more sophisticated look. None of this made up for the poor profits the Corvair made due to the production expense and low sales volume of a niche car. Chevy was glad to pull the plug in ‘69, but it wasn’t Ralph Nader’s poorly researched book or bad handling that killed the Corvair, it was money.

VW kept swing axles until the ‘69 model year (‘68 for semi-automatic cars), while Mercedes used them through ‘72 on their top of the line models. By then they had spent endless hours creating the "low-pivot" swing axle that featured only one CV joint, so the differential actually pivots slightly with one of the halfshafts as the road wheel moves up and down. It was a splendid example of using careful design development to make a very mediocre concept work acceptably, but nobody was surprised when they abandoned it with the new S-Class introduced for ‘73.

'66 Imperial limos also had pushbuttons as they were based on cars Chrysler shipped to Ghia in Italy for conversion to limos. If not enough limos were ordered one year they kept the cars in storage and updated the grills and other small features for the new model year, but didn't bother to swap out the buttons. Lynn Townsend, head of Chrysler for many years, supposedly didn't like pushbuttons. He spent much of his career working hard to make Chrysler abandon most anything that made them special and different from Ford and GM.

My aunt who had the '62 Studie Hawk also had an early Barracuda, white with blue vinyl bucket seats, 273 V-8 and pushbutton Torqueflite. I think this must have been rare on Barracudas as I've been told by Chrysler people that Barracudas never had pushbuttons, but I remember very clearly watching my 17 year old cousin manually shift it by punching the buttons accelerating from a stoplight (at full throttle of course) and then telling me in no uncertain terms "Don't tell Mother!"

Pic is of turbine car cruising Burbank last year: whooooooosh!

Ford had nothing to do with Studebaker engines. They introduced one of the early postwar overhead valve V8s in 1951 which powered most of the Hawks and many other Studebakers as well, although their flathead six was around for many years as a cheaper alternate. When they ceased production at their historical home plant in South Bend, Indiana in December of 1963 they made arrangements with Chevrolet to buy Chevy engines for Studebakers that continued to be produced in Canada. I believe this was necessary as their engines had always been made in Indiana, and no production there meant no Studebaker engines. The agreement with Chevy continued through mid '66 when the Canadian plant ceased operation as well, and Studebaker was out of the car business.

Studie only make Larks and Lark-based cars in Canada, so no Hawks or Avantis were made there with Chevy engines. The Avanti II was made in part of the old South Bend plant starting in '65, but its management and ownership had nothing to do with the old Studebaker company, rather it was owned by a couple of Studie dealers who bought the equipment and some plant space and relaunched the Avanti as an independent make rather than a model. They also used Chevy V8s. Through a series of owners and an eventual redesign the Avanti II was made up through the early '90s, and a few of the last ones did have Ford power, but all Avanti IIs made in South Bend had Chevys under the hood.

I believe that ABS system on the Mark III is quite rare and only worked on the rear wheels. As with too many good inventions, it was created by an American company but subsequently abandoned and then properly developed by other companies. I'm pretty sure it was the first electronic ABS ever, although certainly not the first ABS system. That honor goes to the Jensen FF introduced in '66 which had both fulltime four wheel drive and four wheel ABS via the Ferguson Formula and Dunlop Maxaret systems. With the Chrysler 383 and Torqueflite it made the FF one of the most capable GT cars of the era, but the systems were fully mechanical and expensive and so only a few hundred FFs were built. I've often wondered if the FF influenced Ford and Kelsey-Hayes to develop a cheaper ABS design that didn't rely on having the Ferguson four wheel drive system as the Maxaret did.

When I was a kid a good friend of my dad's had a very early Mark III, black on black with a black interior. It was a stunning car, and at that time didn't look like anything else on the road; I recall sitting in it at a stoplight and seeing passersby just stare. I also remember the owners commenting on how much fuel it used, which is amazing as they loved powerful engines and for years wouldn't have a car without a big V8 (excepting their V12 Jag); they also had a '70 ram-air 455 Toronado, '72 Imperial, and had owned several '60s Continentals. For them to notice the poor economy it must have been really bad.

The Chrysler 300 ad says something about a car with a cockpit, but I don't think it has a cockpit so much as a promenade deck! Second to last year for the "old" 300 nameplate if I remember correctly.