1965 Studebaker Cruiser - today's budget tempter

By: Guy Allen, Unique Cars magazine

Date: 19.02.2017

Sixties V8 was locally assembled

Studebake Cruiser would be a fun classic for not a lot of money.

If you go digging back, you might be surprised at how many different cars were assembled in this country over time. In part that's because there were tax breaks for anything which had local content, so manufacturers commonly shipped CKD (complete knock-down) kits across the water to be assembled here.

Citroen, Volkswagen and, yes, even Studebaker were among them.

The Cruiser came out of the Lark family, which consisted of numerous models, in two and four doors, coupe, sedan, convertible and station wagon.

Meanwhile the Cruiser nameplate existed from 1963 to 1966.

What you see here is a third-generation car from the Lark platform, which was available with a choice of two six-xylinder engines and one V8. This car has the latter, a 283ci (4.6lt) unit aka the Thunderbolt engine mated to the Flightomatic transmission.

The Queensland seller says the car is in very good original condition and, assuming it checks out, seems to offer a pretty cheap entry into classics given its $12,895 sticker price.

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