For 1959, Studebaker cleverly repackaged its aging product line as the compact Lark, but the full-sized Silver Hawk continued on.

For the 1959 model year, the Studebaker-Packard Corporation pulled off a minor automotive miracle. Few would guess from its appearance, but the new Lark was actually the aging full-sized car line cleverly repackaged as a compact, and the company was rewarded with a giant boost in sales. (See our feature on the Lark transformation here.) But for reasons that were never entirely clear, one full-size product was spared the axe: the Silver Hawk. A full 204 inches in length, more than two feet longer than the Lark,  the sport-luxury coupe continued to roll along on its generous 120-inch wheelbase.

For ’59, the Hawk product line was pared down to one model, the Silver Hawk, with one body style, the C-body post coupe, and a single trim level. (In the following year, the Silver tag was dropped and it became simply the Hawk.) The Golden Hawk was no more, and with the demise of the Packard brand, the Packard Hawk was gone as well. Two-tone paint schemes were also discontinued.

Beyond that, the changes for ’59 were relatively few: new wheelcovers, revised tailfins and badging, park/turn signals moved from the tops of the front fenders down into the grille region. One interesting new feature was the fold-down front seat (above), a familiar American Motors gimmick. Both cloth and vinyl fabrics were available, each in the same vertically pleated pattern. At $2,360 to $2,495, the Silver Hawk occupied a unique price niche, around $1,200 less than the Ford Thunderbird, another sporty full-sized coupe.

Silver Hawk engine choices were limited to two: a 170 cubic-inch L-head six with a whopping 90 horsepower, or a 259 cubic-inch V8. Either could be matched to a three-speed manual, manual overdrive, or Flightomatic (Borg-Warner) automatic. In standard form with a two-barrel carburetor, the V8 was rated at 180 hp. For an additional $48, V8 buyers could opt for a four-barrel carb and dual exhausts, boosting output to 195 hp. Naturally, the V8s outsold the weak L-head six by better than two to one. But in the big picture, either V8 was a significant downgrade from the ’56-’58 Golden Hawks with 275 hp.

On the strength of the new compact Lark, Studebaker sales nearly tripled in ’59 to almost 130,000 cars and the company reported its first profit in six years. However, the Silver Hawk was only a bit player in that success with a total volume of 7,788 cars. Still, the numbers were regarded as good enough to keep the Hawk in production. With a redesign by Brooks Stevens to create the Grand Turismo Hawk in 1962, the Hawk would remain in the lineup through MY 1964 and the end of Studebaker production in the United States.