WAGON MARKET GUIDE
IF YOU’VE stared at the pictures of our featured Daytona and been smitten with the idea of owning one, then local Studebaker clubs will be the best place to start. Australian cars most likely came from Studebaker’s Canadian factory (which produced all Studebakers after 1963) but reliable production figures are hard to source. We can say with some certainty that just 618 Wagonaires were made in 1966 - Studebaker’s final year as a manufacturer. If nothing is immediately available locally, your next stop may well be somewhere in the USA. There are some lovely cars featured on Studebaker web-sites but owners seemingly aren’t anxious to sell them. Wagonaires rarely appear in auction catalogues or on specialist car-lots so cruising the internet or haunting car shows is the best way to snare one. North American values are reasonable; good cars when they are offered costing US$1215,000.
The truly fortunate might stumble across one of the incredibly rare R2 Wagonaires with the same supercharged V8 used in Studebaker’s sporty Avanti.
“IT’S NOT QUITE CONCOURS BUT THAT REALLY DOESN’T INTEREST ME”
t hat sort of stuf f.
“This particular Daytona Wagonaire has a 4.3 litre, a small V8 – the other V8 that Studebaker manufactured was a 289. This is just a standard t hree-speed auto column-shif t, it a lso came with a manual three-on-the-column with an overdrive, and a bit later on some of t hem came wit h a factor y f loor shift – four on t he f loor.
“When I got t his car it looked a hell of a lot worse t han it actua lly was. There was a lot of surface rust, I r ubbed it back to bare metal by hand. There wasn’t too much to do after that – a litt le bit of r ust to cut out.
“After I did t he gr unt work I got a professiona l painter to f inish it of f. The original colour was a boring grey and I agonised for hours over what to paint it. These are period colours but were never in t his combination in t his car.
“It’s a factor y interior, in fact t he seats and dashboard are a ll original – just tidied up a bit – and t he carpets have been redone. The door cards and upholster y are a ll factor y original.
“It’s not quite concours – t here’d be a fa ir bit of work to get it up to t hat sta ndard, but t hat doesn’t rea lly interest me because I just love driv ing it around. I drive it as of ten as I can.”