Meet the Fleet – Muscle Cars: ’57 Studebaker Golden Hawk

• BODY: Auto World
• WHEELS & TIRES: Road Race Replicas

The Studebaker Hawks of the mid and late 1950’s were truly amazing cars. As a GM fanatic, “Stoodys” have always been at the periphery of my radar; I’ve always been aware of them and their significant contributions to the American industry both before and after WWII, but I’ve never studied them and obsessed over them the way I have with Chevrolets, Buicks, Cadillacs, et al. But the 1957 Golden Hawk is the car that could change all that.

The Golden Hawk name was first used in 1956 as a continuation of the original Raymond Lowey coupe design that debuted in 1953 as the Starliner, which was marketed as a 2-door coupe variant of the Champion and Commander series of cars. For 1955 this body design got a slightly restyled grille and appeared as the President Speedster, which many Studebaker fans appear to regard as the apex of the design. In ’56 the car was redesigned with a heavier looking upright grille; in this year the Golden Hawk sat at the top of a rather confusing family of Hawk models, and it was the only one that year to sport tailfins. In ’57, however, the Hawk model line was culled to just the Golden Hawk and the Silver Hawk, and both cars grew a set of terrific looking razor-sharp tailfins, which not only made them more contemporary but also-IMHO-helped to balance out the rear of the car with the taller grille introduced the previous year. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the Silver Hawk was the lower model sold as a pillared coupe and available with either a straight-6 or a normally aspirated V8, while the Golden Hawk was the flagship, a hardtop coupe with a sumptuous interior sold with the supercharged version of the company’s superb 289 V8, marketed as the “Sweepstakes V8.”

The interior of the Golden Hawk-and particularly the instrument panel-is stunning, covered with a machine-turned aluminum applique and featuring aircraft-style white on black gauges including a boost gauge for the McCulloch supercharger mounted directly in front of the steering column; with brightly colored sectors for each demark, that gauge sent an already fabulous dash panel completely into the stratosphere; these were truly beautiful cars. And they were expensive, at nearly $3700 for the top line model: quite a chunk of change in 1957! Sadly, even this impressive flagship was not enough to save Studebaker, still in financial trouble following the Packard merger the year before. Due partly to its high price and “halo car” nature, just over 4,300 Golden Hawks were built for ’57.

This particular slot car has been one of my worst performers due to its size and weight; the large amount of front and rear overhang makes the handling clumsy, and although I made many attempts to improve it, including trying different wheels and axles and even a chassis swap, I could never overcome the laws of physics until I fitted it the with “Max Force Gold Level” super trac mags I profiled here. Since then, the car stays on the track and moves out pretty well. In a way these magnets are a cheat, but since a car of this era and pedigree is showing up to race more in the spirit of exhibition than competition, the race judges (that would be your humble blogger here) have decided to let it pass. She’s one of only 2 cars in the fleet fitted with Road Race Replicas #811 steel wheels called “Factories,” and wears the same firm’s grippy full size silicone tires to squeeze out every bit of handling potential.

The Hawk is as impressive today as it was when new, especially when seen in a non-standard color like this example here, owned by Floyd “Fender Bender” Franklin, a recent transplant to California originally hailing from outside Lansing, Michigan. Found in a barn in 1978, the car had been off the road since the late 1960’s and was as rusty as one would expect for a Michigan native, but it was also a low mileage original that had never been disturbed, and was ordered from the factory with some desirable and unusual options, including the Borg-Warner T85 3-speed with overdrive. Even more unusual were the options that it did NOT have: with the exception of the heater, everything unnecessary for performance was removed, including the radio, power windows, and other convenience accessories, making this an extremely unusual example of a high-line car which was clearly ordered by its original owner strictly for its performance potential.

For this reason it was worth saving, and Franklin’s extensive restoration included taking the car from its original “Tiara Gold” to a slightly green-hued variation of the original color, in line with his personal preference. After relocating to California in 1982, he decided to put the car on the track to see what it could do, and now makes regular appearances at Drag City to run in the muscle car class, where he keeps up quite well with cars with far larger engines. Franklin’s daughter nicknamed the Golden Hawk “The Tractor” because it was pulled from a barn full of them, and since taking the car to the road course he has modified that to “The Tracktor”, the name by which the car is known today. She may never win a tournament, but she still shows on race day and still draws fans and admirers in the paddock.