While the Studebaker Avanti is celebrated as a masterpiece in American design today, it was the product of a rush job by an automaker that was almost out of business.

It’s a bittersweet fact that when the Avanti, Studebaker’s most glamorous postwar car, was introduced on April 26, 1962, the company was not long for the automobile business. Sherwood Egbert (above left) was appointed president in February of 1961 with a clear mandate from the corporation’s directors: turn the car brand around or shut it down completely.

Moving quickly and aggressively, Egbert commissioned independent designer Brooks Stevens to revamp the Lark and Hawk product lines, and he arranged to make Paxton superchargers (Paxton was then a Studebaker division) optional on all models. For his next stroke, Egbert turned to longtime Studebaker consultant Raymond Loewy (above right) to create a new halo vehicle for the automaker—something to make car buyers excited about Studebakers again. On a brochure for the Jaguar E-Type, Egbert scribbled a note: “Do something like this.”

With no time to waste, in March of 1961 Loewy set up a studio in a house in Palm Springs, California and hand-picked a three-man team: John Ebstein, VP of his design firm, modeler Bob Andrews, and a young California designer named Tom Kellog. In just eight days they completed a scale model in clay that featured a two-place sports coupe on one side and a four-seat GT on the other.

While the Palm Springs design was a true collaboration, it was Loewy himself who insisted on the coke-bottle profile, the bladed fenders, and the radical front end with no grille, taking in cooling air from below the front bumper. Loewy had decided that the traditional front grille was an anachronism. He wasn’t really a hardware guy, but he had picked up that cars draw most of their cooling air from underneath.

Egbert approved the four-seater GT version and work immediately began in South Bend on a full-size clay. On April 27, barely five weeks after the program began, the Studebaker board of directors viewed the full-size clay model and approved the Avanti (Italian for “forward”) for production, and the engineering and manufacturing teams snapped into action.

To save time and money, the Avanti’s body shell was molded in fiberglass, with parts supplied by the Molded Fiberglass Co. of Ashtabula, Ohio, the same company that produced the bodies for the original 1953 Corvette. A Lark convertible frame with 109-inch wheelbase was chosen for its central X-member, stiffening the structure, and Bendix front disc brakes (licensed from Dunop) were standard. It wasn’t a terribly advanced chassis for its time, but at 3100 lbs the Avanti package was of reasonable weight and proportions. And with the 289 CID V8, especially in R2 or R3 supercharged form, it was a capable performer, and the automotive press gave its thumbs-up.

Along with the bold exterior styling, one more area where the Avanti stood out was in its cockpit. While other American carmakers of the period approached the Euro GT theme in cautious half-steps, the Indiana carmaker embraced it enthusiastically: wrap-around instrument cluster and round gauges, aircraft-style controls, real bucket seats, and a central console with floor shifter. Even today, Avanti enthusiasts cite the cabin as among their favorite features.

Priced in the Ford Thunderbird range at around $4500 and fraught with production issues, the Avanti was a sensation in the press but missed its sales targets by a mile. Egbert had hoped to move 20,000 units a year but the ’63 volume amounted to only 3,834 cars, and the ’64 model year was worse. Egbert stepped down from Studebaker in November of ’63, suffering from cancer, and when U.S. production ended a month later, the Avanti was cancelled. But the Avanti story doesn’t end there, as several more companies would continue to produce the car for several more decades—and that’s a chapter for another day.