By Tim Odell
Who wouldn’t love a funky compact wagon with a 289ci V8 up front? Despite what those iconic numbers would suggest, today’s subject hails from South Bend, Indiana, not Dearborn, Michigan. Specifically, we’re looking at a Studebaker Lark Daytona Wagonaire. Daytona = 289 V8 powered model, with power steering and disc brakes; Wagonaire = Studebaker wagon with a sliding section of the rear roof. Despite what GMC might’ve told you, our own Jim’s Envoy XUV didn’t really break any new ground.
Maybe we’ll admit that the intervening 40 years offered some improvement to the design of the open-top-wagon-thing. Specifically, the Envoy is actually weather tight, with weather-resistant surfaces (aka hard plastic) back there. Our Wagonaire’s headliner appears to be colonized by fungi in the wake of some water ingress. The rough condition continues around the vehicle, but I’m struck by the rough-but-not-awful shape it’s in…kinda like any other four-digit craigslist/ebay classic. Typically when we see rare/unique cars like these, they’re either pristine and crazily priced or utterly wretched. This seems like an example you could drive and use properly (e.g. palm tree or grandfather clock transport) while replacing the worst bits as-needed. The current $5,300 bit puts it about double an equivalent Falcon or Nova in this kind of shape, but the seller doesn’t seem to have ambitions of too crazy pricing, given that the add reads like any other old car ad (minus a giant Wikipedia copy/paste).
1964 Studebaker Wagonaire for sale – eBay Motors
Be sure to soak up the very 1963ness of the Lark Daytona Wagonaire in this old clip:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY90d4zwo24[/youtube]
Jeff Glucker
It's always good to see my old Matchbox cars in the real world.I always thought the sliding roof was such a good idea.
<img src="http://www.vectis.co.uk/AuctionImages/407/1494_l.jpg"width="600">
Ummm…so you list your friend's car on eBay and add "THE CAR IS NOW OFFERED FOR SALE" Well, duh!
The battery is dead. So, put a new one in and tell us how it starts and run! Puh-leeeze!
And finally, when sellers copy and paste a Wikipedia entry into their post, it drives me nuts!
Yeah, not sure what the giant copy/paste gets someone over a link. Like, that's kinda the whole point of the internet, so we don't have to copy/paste everything.
Also, a non-running/starting car automatically needs a giant discount, as the list of other things wrong with it could be very extensive. With something that at least fires and kinda/sorta rolls under its own power, you can gauge if things like brakes, wheel bearings, driveshafts, etc are ok.
That's not a '63. Ask him if he has a title or bill of sale.
Sorry. It's a '64. When I looked back, I saw the reference to the video.
That would still be cool idea today, seems like something Nissan would do.
GM did it in the early/mid 00's with the envoy xuv. It had a partition that could be raised to close in the cabin when the roof was open.
"IT WAS REPORTED TO ME THAT THE OWNER HAD SPENT WELL OVER 15K IN THE LAST FEW YEARS ON THIS CAR."
On what? Storage fees? I like Wagonaires, and the power steering and brakes are cool (Bendix disc brakes, too!), but this looks like it would be quite a project. It's missing some little things, and I wonder how had it's going to be to find taillight lenses?
It's a great line though! "It was reported to me…" Not even, my friend told me, but, hey, I heard from this other guy who also knows the guy with the car that he spent lots of money on it. I didn't bother to ask the guy with the car about it, because it was reported to me, and why would I doubt that. Credibility without responsibility!
Yeah, the Envoy XUV, v1.
What you'd think should be a smash hit for automakers…half "truck"/half wagon, doesn't seem to do it.
We'd all rather have a 4-door, 15 MPG pickup to haul air around, 99.8% of the time.
(not me, if I ever own another pickup, all previous ones were the definition of 'work truck', it'll be a V6 Doge diesel)
Cool! Never heard of the Wagonaire before. It looks a bit like a more road-oriented Wagoneer, which is reasonable, as both were designed by Brooks Stevens. By the way, even the names are similar (Wagonaire/Wagoneer). Didn't Studebaker have trouble with Kaiser Jeep for that?