Ya' know kat, we'd get killed for it, but we need a thread on cars we've owned. Bert's pickup, your Stude truck (generator)...........Studebaker....great cars and sadly gone. However..................

I had a friend who was in his fifties (I in my 20's) who collected Studebakers. He had a beautiful and rare Speedster model and an equally beautiful '62 Hawk. He was rebuilding another Hawk and had several parts cars, one in driveable condition. On several occasions he'd sold it to one of us to drive while we worked on whatever we had. My turn came when I was rebuilding the 455 in my '70 Goat. Warren sold me the Hawk for $100 and as always expected to buy it back when I was through.

This old Hawk had a lot of good parts and a lot of bad ones too. The engine was in decent shape and the old girl ran like a bat outta' hell but the steering linkage was shot.....not a good piece, tie rod or idler or pitman to be found and at 110 the thing set up a shimmy that would damn near yank the wheel out of your hands. I look back and wonder what the hell we were doing driving the thing that fast to begin with, but the young know no mortality. It was also rusting out here and there, to say the very least.

It's February, the snow is blowing a dust around on a very cold wind, 3:00 in the morning and Howie and I are still working in the shop on the goat. For reasons known only to god and the very young, we decided to take a run out to the truck stop for breakfast and then come back as the shop opened at 6 AM. It's also unclear to me why we took the Stude instead of Howard's winter beater which was a very decent Ford pickup. We took off and about 15 miles out the freeway the oil pressure dropped a lot and we pulled over and checked the oil, but it looked like the oil pump was fragging.........Can't fix it, so might as well eat. Another ten miles and the rust caught up with a headlight which fell out so again we pulled over and with some judicious applications of electrical tape (we had no duct tape in the car) we were off again.

Had a nice, big, greasy, breakfast and started home, only to find that there was this funny clunk in the differential when you started out and as we turned, you could hear the diff spinning and you lost go power....spider gears were gone. I guess the folks back in South Bend had programmed this old girl to self-destruct on this day some 15 years after it left the factory. Luckily, I only had a few hours to go on the GTO so I really didn't care.

Then a funny thing happened. This kid walked into the shop a couple of days later and asked about the Hawk. He was 16 and dying for a car and just loved the way it looked......I mean he was all excited about the thing. Before I tell him I can't sell it as Warren wants it back, he whips $300. out of his pocket and says it's all he has and will I take it? Well.................Warren was really pissed and didn't speak to me again for years and later, when I saw "Christine" I recognized that same look the kid had when Arnie viewed the Plymouth. I felt a bit bad about the whole thing, but money talks, bullshit walks....... and I needed the bucks.

I saw the kid about a month later as he turned the corner in front of the shop. Three other kids hopped out as he turned to get the Stude around the slow turn, the spider gears must have been completely gone at that point. I was out front getting a car to pull in and he gave me a big wave with a smile. Happiness is a fine thing ain't it?

Spaw