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Identifying the First-Gen Ford MustangThe Studebaker Champ Was a Real Lark (Literally)
The Studebaker Champ was a ready-made pickup, part E-Series and part Lark. But old mechanicals and new looks made for a winning truck.A Parts Bin Champ(ion)
When is a truck not a truck? Perhaps when it’s a ute, like the El Camino. Or maybe when it’s a unibody, like the Ford Maverick. A truck might also not be a truck if its entire front end is borrowed from a sedan. This isn’t quite fair to the Maverick, which is a great, affordable hybrid truck, unibody or no. Nor is it fair to the El Camino and other utes of the world, which are perfectly happy residing in that liminal space between car and truck. And it’s thoroughly unfair to the Studebaker Champ, which was every bit as much of a truck as any other ½ ton of its day, despite or even because it shared a front end with the Studebaker Lark.
Debuting in 1960, the Champ was Studebaker’s attempt at giving their aging line of pickups a new lease on life. The only problem was a shoe-string budget of $900,000 to do it. This meant a lot of parts bin raiding to make something “new” out of what Studebaker already had laying around. The result, while not groundbreaking, was a good, durable truck with a striking resemblance to Studebaker’s surprise hit Lark sedan.
Studebaker’s Struggles
The story of Studebaker is a lesson in entropy; that all good things, especially mid-size American carmakers, come to an end. Studebaker got into the car business in 1902 and left it by 1966. The plucky automaker from South Bend, Indiana, took on Detroit’s Big Three and lost, but along the way Studebaker made a lot of cool and memorable cars. The 1950s were an especially competitive time in the automotive industry and the likes of Studebaker, Packard, Nash-Kelvinator, and Hudson felt the pressure from the Detroit titans of Ford, GM, and Chrysler, all of whom could leverage their size to both battle each other and squeeze smaller firms out of the market.
A failure to merge all four of the above companies saw Nash and Hudson tie the knot to form American Motors Corporation (AMC) and Packard and Studebaker were left to lash themselves together in 1956 to try to keep from sinking. The merger kept Studebaker-Packard afloat for another decade. In that time, Studebaker managed to produce a few interesting and successful cars, but even collectively, they were far from enough to stave off the inevitable.
Cobbling Together a Champ
During this time of struggle, one of Studebaker’s initiatives was to revamp their pickup truck offerings with a new, more modern look. The company’s E-Series trucks were rapidly aging and any hopes of remaining competitive among light-duty trucks called for a major reinvention. Budget constraints ruled out a clear sheet design so lead designer Duncan McRae came up with an ingenious solution.
The Lark sedan, new for 1959, had been a surprise hit for Studebaker. It turns out the Lark was a bit of a parts bin special itself, built from the cut down chassis of full-size Studebakers and existing mechanicals but given a new body design. And so, like the Lark itself, the Champ used what Studebaker had on-hand, in its case E-Series chassis and parts along with the Lark’s exterior.
There were only two major external adaptations made to go from Lark to Champ. The first was adding larger bumpers and moving them downward to account for the truck’s higher ride height. You can see on the stamping just above the Champ’s bumper where the bumper would have been fitted on the Lark. The second was sealing up the back end of the cab. Notably, Studebaker’s designers installed a sliding rear window, giving the Champ the first such window in a US production pickup, something we take for granted in today’s trucks.
The Champ Keeps It Old School
The Studebaker Champ was offered with four different engines when it debuted in 1960. First where a pair of straight-sixes, a standard 170 cu.-in. making 90 horsepower and a larger 245 cu.-in. motor with 118 horsepower. Buyers could also pick one of two V8s, a 259 cu.-in. making 180 horsepower or a 289 V8 with 210 or 225 horsepower, depending on the whether it had a two- or four-barrel carburetor. The larger of the two straight-sixes was dropped the following year and the 170 cu.-in. switched to an over-head valve design, which added 22 horsepower in output. The Champ’s transmission options included a three- or four-speed manual transmission or, for V8s only, an optional “Flight-O-Matic” Borg-Warner automatic transmission.
The Champ’s pontoon style bed of 1960 was replaced with a larger, squarer bed starting in 1961. This “Spaceside” bed was made with tooling bought from Dodge, previously used on their 1958-60 Sweptline design. The tacked-on bed did not fit with the width of the Champs cab, giving the truck an even more cobbled together look than before. Even so, the new beds offered greater utility for the Champ and could be ordered in six-and-a-half or eight-foot versions.
Though “new,” the Champ was an old truck from the start. The E-Series parts left the Champ with leaf springs front and rear, no power steering, and old-fashioned flat-head straight-sixes. Even the pedals, which came up from the floor were behind the times as many manufacturers had switched to new swing style pedals. Even the Champ’s name was an old hand-me-down, as Studebaker already had their Champion sedan which dated back to 1939. The Champ’s Lark bits proved its saving grace. In addition to the sharp exterior design, the Champ had a very modern interior, complete with a padded dashboard and AM radio.
The Studebaker Champ was not a huge seller, moving 5,500 in each of its first two years of production. 1963 saw the Champ’s best-selling year with 7,325 units sold. Sales dipped with 5,861 for 1963 and final model year ‘64s (completed in 1963) sold a total of 2,509 units for a total of 20,195 Champ pickups. The struggling Champ ceased production in 1963 when Studebaker closed their South Bend facility and shifted operations wholly to their Ontario facility. A last-ditch effort in the Avanti, briefly the fastest production car in the world, couldn’t save Studebaker from insolvency and the company folded in 1966.
The Studebaker Champ was not a sales success nor was it an original product, but it has become in the intervening sixty years a unique classic pickup with plenty of aftermarket support (Studebaker left a lot of parts in storage when the company closed). For those looking to get into classic cars on a budget, the Studebaker Champ is an affordable, if atypical, choice.
