I purchased the truck from John Poulos, a gentleman in the Studebaker club. He had found the truck listed in one of those "pennysaver" fliers as a Studebaker truck with a bunch of parts. He wasn't really interested in the truck, just the parts and so offered it to the first person on the Studebaker newsgroup to offer him $1000.


A previous owner had decided to street rod it after the engine quit running, and had removed the radiator, gas tank, and gutted the interior before losing interest. When it was offered to the newsgroup he wasn't sure if it was a 60 or a 61, and didn't know if it would run, just that the engine wasn't locked up.

I've always liked these trucks, and a V8 short narrow bed is the best looking version, so I went for it.


Ray Fichthorn, a noted Studebaker mechanic and restoration artist and I went up to Maryland to pick the truck up. John couldn't resist tinkering and by the time we got there he had the truck running, turns out the only thing wrong with it was a bad distributor rotor... the previous owner was going to scrap the engine because of a $1 part! We drove it onto the trailer for the ride home. We stopped at a Ponderosa Steak House just north of Richmond for a bite to eat and as we were about to pull out of the parking lot when a guy in a little Toyota pickup started waving frantically at us. Ray rolled down his window and the guy pointed at the Champ and yelled "Want to sell it?", Ray called back "We just bought it!". The guy slammed his fists against his steering wheel and roared off, right over the median.

Over the next few weeks at Rays shop we went through the brakes, put on a new set of tires, a radiator and gas tank and generally got the truck roadworthy. The original plan was to build the truck into my daily driver but for other reasons that wasn't working out so once it was roadworthy I picked it up and drove home. It was working fine except for the overdrive... which was a hint of things to come. After driving about 10 miles the overdrive kicked in and the rest of the trip home was uneventful.

A few weeks later I drove the truck to the Tri-State Studebaker Meet just south of Asheville. After the meet I took a bit of a drive and took this picture along US 276.

This blog is no longer being maintained, to find out more about this truck and it's progress check out my new blog on my website, Carolinastudes.net