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Brendan Collier's '63 Avanti R4
1963 Studebaker Avanti R4
I was looking for something rarer than Ford, Chev or Holden. I had a Golden Hawk at the time and this Avanti was for sale and because it had one of only about 10 R4 engines ever built, I decided to buy it. The car was in Western Australia and it cost around $50,000 four years ago.
It had originally been owned by a Singaporean from new. He had sent it back to America around 1966 where it had the R4 engine retro-fitted by Paxton Products then it was sent back to Singapore. R4 engines were specially built for racing by Paxton, Studebaker had already closed down by ‘66.
A British engineer purchased the car in the 70s to send back to England but first it went to Australia to get converted to right-hand drive. While it was here it was bought by a Studebaker club member then was eventually sold to a West Australian collector who had it for about 30 years.
R4 engines are normally aspirated with twin, four-barrel Carter AFB carbies and 12:1 compression and produced around 300hp. They had special blocks with a larger bores because the heads were specially built with bigger valves and larger ports and they can’t be fitted to earlier engines.
It’s got three-speed auto – similar to the early Ford FMX gearbox design – made for Studebaker by Borg-Warner, and a Dana differential. The Dayton wires were a factory dealer option. It originally had air-conditioning but that was removed when it was converted to right-hand drive.
The shape of the Avanti is what attracted me to it but I also liked the history behind it and the fact that six blokes went to the desert for six weeks and came up with the Avanti concept, which had a lot of European styling influences. The problem was Studebaker had to use existing engines and components. But it’s a piece of art and this engine is very rare.
Photography: Alistair Brook