In 1960, Studbaker made one final run at the pickup truck market with the Champ, which borrowed its styling and much of its sheet metal from the Lark compact.
As one of the USA’s oldest automotive manufacturers, Studebaker enjoyed a long and mostly successful career in the truck market. But by 1960 its pickup line, introduced way back in 1949, was looking extremely long in the tooth. Lacking the resources to develop new product but desperate for a new look, the South Bend automaker gave its old truck a clever facelift by adapting the front half of its Lark compact body shell to the existing pickup chassis.
The doors, cowl, instrument panel, and front clip were all Lark components as crafted by Studebaker design chief Duncan McRae, with a closeout panel added to the rear of the cab. (See our Lark feature here.) The bubble-fendered bed, chassis, and running gear all carried over from the previous pickup. The Champ name, of course, was also taken from a familiar Studebaker passenger car model: Champion. The slogan was “tougher than the job.”
Engine choices for the 1960 rollout included a pair of L-head sixes of 170 CID and 245 CID (the venerable Stude Big SIx) with 90 hp and 118 hp, respectively, and 259 CID and 289 CID V8s with 180 hp and 210 hp. Half-ton and three-quarter-ton models were were offered, along with two wheelbases, 112 and 122 inches. Four transmissions were available, including a Borg-Warner automatic for the V8 models. A little oddly, power steering was never an option, but there was a novel sliding rear window, a feature that became ubiquitous on U.S. pickups years later.
For 1961 the Champ received several upgrades. There was an overhead-valve version of the old 170 CID L-head six, now good for 112 hp, while the ancient Studebaker Big Six was discontinued. And there was finally a new cargo box—new to Studebaker, anyway, as the South Bend automaker arranged to use the Dodge ’59-’60 Sweptline bed, which it named the Spaceside. The mismatched cab and bed styling (above) offer an interesting parallel to the Ford Wrongbed pickups of 1961-66 we featured here.
The Champ’s sales volume never amounted to much, even for Studebaker’s relatively low output. Production bumped along at the 5,000+ level most years, hitting a peak of 7,325 units in 1962. In the ’64 model year only 2,509 Champs were produced, as the Studebaker plant in South Bend shut down in December of ’63, halfway through the model run. When automotive operations were shifted to Hamilton, Ontario for 1964, the company was gone from the truck business for good.
Don Rasmusan in Portland OR was a aggresive Studebaker dealer, had a good bit of inventory, wasn’t a rare sight to see Champs working away back then. I sure did want a red Dayton w/a 4 speed, he had a bunch of them on the lot, tough being a broke kid.
Though not as “integrated” as the Ranchero and El Camino, still an arguably handsome “car-truck”.
Unlike the El Camino and Ranchero, the Champ was a real truck (truck chassis).
The front bumper doesn’t fit the passenger car body at all. It’s though they didn’t even try.
They didn’t even have to try. Back then, manufacturers and buyers saw trucks were utilitarian objects, and obviously these bumpers and the mismatched cargo boxes of the Champ Spaceside – and Ford trucks of the same era – wouldn’t fly today.
My guess is that Studebaker saw a practical advantage to mounting the bumper lower on the Champ than on the Lark passenger cars. Since the Champ body appears to stand higher than the Lark, the bumper may be lower may to protect the frame and chassis components behind it. It also may have avoided overriding the bumpers of other vehicles while parallel parking, or during a crash. Whatever the reason, cash-strapped Studebaker probably figured that the production of the Champ was too low to justify a unique stamping, especially when buyers of the time probably wouldn’t notice, or even care.
The Lark frame was much “flatter” than the truck frame, so the Lark body had extra brackets added underneath so it would sit correctly on the truck frame. It was either that or modify the floor pan and cowl to sit lower, and that would make the bed look too tall. Better to have a bumper mis-match than the bed/cab look way to mis-matched! This resulted in the cab riding about 5 inches higher than the front frame horns.
As pointed out earlier, trucks really didn’t require exacting bed/cab/bumper matches to sell to the end users.
Thanks, Bill. I always enjoy seeing your comments. You definitely have a vast wealth of knowledge, and I appreciate you sharing it.
A unique model was the 7E9 pickup called Especial Champ, produced only in Argentina. It had a Ford F-100 cargo box (better fit than the Dodge) but the most interesting part was its lower stand, which was that of the Lark with independent front suspension etc all! Nice preRanchero truck! The only engine was the 259 V8 and just less than 4000 were built including the 7E7 (the higher model with solid front axle)
I have one Special Champ, I love it! It was ahead of this time!
Mario,
As a guy who likes Studebakers, and having owned a late 1964 Champ pickup, I’ve always wanted to see an Argentinian Champ 7E9 in person to see if they used the Lark convertible frame or the truck frame [I’m guessing the Lark frame].
I started visiting South Bend in 1970 to buy parts from SASCO [the Studebaker parts division], and remember even then the factory had multiple examples of truck cabs on one of the higher floors, they even had a few of the old C type Transtar cabs, brand new in primer.
So I would not be surprised to hear someone was still building new trucks after 1964, as all the parts were available and the more you bought, the cheaper the parts became, especially bulky parts that took up lots of storage space. And of course they were still supplying Avanti Motors with Lark convertible rolling chassis assemblies, so it would have been easy to source Lark convertible frames. I remember seeing literally hundreds of bare Lark frames sitting outside in stacks!
Are you familiar enough with the differences in the truck and Lark frames to be able to tell me which one was used in building the 7E9 trucks?
And did the 7E7 trucks have a bumper gap as on the normal Champ truck?
Still wonder what might have happened had Stude opted to stay in trucks when they quit cars…
The problem was that Studebaker never updated their trucks after the 2R series was introduced in 1949. While the Champ helped the pickup line the underlying components were dated. Suspended pedals were not installed until 1963 and were never available on the 1 ton and up trucks.
Newman and Altman purchased the rights to the trucks and the Avanti and only produced the latter.