Studebaker Golden Hawk

The Studebaker Golden Hawk was a two-door pillarless hardtop personal luxury car built by the Studebaker Corporation of South Bend, Indiana, from 1956 to 1958. It took the basic shape of the 1953 to 1955 Champion and Commander Starliner hardtop coupe but added a large, almost vertical eggcrate grille, a raised hoodline and vertical fiberglass tailfins, and it was the last Studebaker before the Avanti to carry styling influenced by Raymond Loewy's studio. The raised hood made room for Packard's 352 cubic inch V8 delivering 275 horsepower, a big engine in a light car that gave it one of the best power-to-weight ratios of any 1956 American production car. For 1957 a supercharged Studebaker 289 cubic inch V8 with the same output replaced the Packard unit. The Golden Hawk was the top of the four-model Hawk line in 1956, and it was discontinued after only 878 sales in 1958, leaving the Silver Hawk as the only Hawk.