To maintain the Golden Hawk’s standing as one of the hotter cars on the road, in 1957 Studebaker added a McCulloch supercharger to the 289 cubic-inch V8.

A while back at Mac’s Motor City Garage, we shared the story of the 1956 Studebaker Hawks (see our feature here). The ambitious four-car product line included some obvious redundancies, so for 1957 the models were pared down to two: the Silver Hawk, based on the pillared C-body shell, and the flagship Golden Hawk, a K-body hardtop. There were some styling changes, too. The bolt-on fiberglass tail fins of ’56 were now taller and stamped in steel for ’57, but the major change for the Golden Hawk was under the hood.

A big part of the selling story for the ’56 Golden Hawk was its 352 cubic-inch Packard V8 with 275 hp, which made it one of the most potent cars on the road. But in the Studebaker-Packard alignment for 1957, the Packard V8s and Ultramatic transmission were no longer in production. Meanwhile, the most powerful Studebaker V8 offered 289 cubic inches and 225 hp, a significant step down in performance and bragging rights. To correct the horsepower shortfall, the company added a McCulloch VS57 centrifugal supercharger as standard equipment.

A popular aftermarket power booster, the McCulloch blower was also used on on Kaiser production cars starting in 1954 before it was adopted by Studebaker. (See our McCulloch history here.)  The VS57 system was engineered not for maximum boost but to raise the torque curve throughout the range, using a variable-diameter driven pulley to limit boost to 5 psi. With its compression ratio reduced to 7.8:1 to control detonation, the supercharged Stude was rated at 275 bhp at 4,800 rpm and 333 lb-ft of torque at 3,200 rpm, breathing through a Stromberg WW two-barrel carburetor inside the pressure box.

The height of the blower installation on the Sweepstakes 289 V8, as it was called, required a fiberglass blister on the hood, and there were a few minor exterior trim changes as well. While both the ’56 and ’57 Golden Hawks were rated at 275 hp, the supercharged ’57 was maybe around a second slower, reportedly, in 0-to-60 mph times. However, many say the lighter Studebaker V8 in the ’57 provided better balance and handling. The road test features in Sports Cars Illustrated (later to become Car and Driver) and Motor Life were overall complimentary, though both groused about the excessive understeer—standard equipment on ’50s American sedans.

Studebaker-Packard was on a supercharger fling in 1957, as all Packards (the Packardbakers) that year were equipped with the boosted Studebaker V8. The Golden Hawk continued with the standard supercharged V8 for 1958, but for ’59 both the Golden Hawk and the McCulloch-equipped V8 were discontinued. One more interesting footnote to the ’57 Golden Hawk story: A limited-edition 400 model (below) featured a unique leather interior and two-tone paint with the grille inlets finished in the contrasting color (below). A late April ’57 launch, just 51 examples were produced (10 show cars and 41 customer jobs) and it’s said only a handful exist today.