1963 Studebaker Lark and Super Lark: The Avanti's Supercharged V8 in a Compact Sedan

In March 1963 Andy Granatelli took a group of R2-engined Studebakers to the Bonneville Salt Flats. Ate Up With Motor records that the group included a couple of Larks alongside Gran Turismo Hawks and Avantis, and that a supercharged Lark with a 3.31 axle reached 132 mph. The Avanti's records had drawn attention the year before. This time the car setting speeds was Studebaker's everyday compact, fitted with the same supercharged 289 that Studebaker had introduced in its new sports coupe.^1,2

The Lark was the car that had kept Studebaker going. Ate Up With Motor writes that it was developed in only seven months and went on sale in November 1958 as a 1959 model, with about 30,000 orders before the Big Three's compacts arrived. By 1963 it had been restyled by Brooks Stevens on a small budget, with dual headlights and a grille the article describes as Mercedes-inspired. Four-door sedans moved to a 113-inch wheelbase while two-doors kept 109 inches, and the line now included the sporty Daytona and the plush Cruiser.¹

For 1963 Studebaker made its Jet Thrust R-series engines available in the Lark. The R1 was a 289 rated at 240 horsepower; the R2 added a Paxton supercharger and was rated at 289. Ate Up With Motor lists them at $210 and $372 as Lark options. Below them the regular Lark V8s ran from a two-barrel 259 at 180 horsepower to a four-barrel 289 at 225, according to Over-Drive Magazine's fact sheet, and the base six was the 170 at 112 horsepower. Air conditioning could not be ordered with the supercharged engine.^2,1,3

In April Studebaker added the Super Lark, which Ate Up With Motor describes as a belated performance package. It was an option package, not a separate model. Old Cars Weekly and Ate Up With Motor describe it as the R1 or R2 engine combined with a Dana 44 limited-slip axle, front disc brakes, a gauge cluster with tachometer and the heavy-duty suspension. It could be ordered on any Lark, though most went on the Daytona hardtop. Super Red paint was reserved for Super Larks and Super Hawks.^1,2,3,4

The package was not cheap for a compact. Ate Up With Motor prices the R2 Super Lark package at $680.02 on a Custom sedan, plus $188.30 for the four-speed manual. Over-Drive Magazine lists the base two-door Lark at $1,935. An R2 four-speed Super Lark therefore added close to $870 to the car's price, before any other options. The parts that made up the package were also available separately: the fact sheet lists front disc brakes at $97.95 and a tachometer at $54.^1,3

Car Life measured what the package could do. Ate Up With Motor reports that the magazine tested an R2 Super Lark Daytona with the Power Shift automatic and recorded 0 to 60 mph in 7.8 seconds and a standing quarter-mile in 16.2 seconds at 87 mph. That result belongs to one automatic R2 car. For comparison, Old Cars Weekly reports Avanti tests of 7.3 seconds with a four-speed and 8.0 with the automatic, engines unstated. The Super Lark package added $680.02 to a Lark; the Avanti started at $4,445.^1,2,1

How many buyers ordered it is not known. Ate Up With Motor says it found no production figures for R2 Larks and has heard estimates from as low as 200 to no more than a few hundred. The Jet Thrust News, the newsletter of the R-engine registry, describes nearly 2,000 R-engine Larks and Hawks built across 1963 and 1964, all engines and both models together. Ate Up With Motor adds that only one R3 Lark and one R4 Lark were ever built.^1,5

One body style has a count. Over-Drive Magazine gives 1,015 Lark convertibles for 1963, and autoevolution reports that records show only 52 of them had R-series engines, 31 of those the supercharged R2. On those figures about 5 percent of 1963 Lark convertibles had an R engine and about 3 percent an R2. The same fact sheet lists 3,763 Daytona hardtops, the body most Super Larks used, but no R-engine split for the hardtops was found.^3,6

The rest of the Lark line shows what most buyers chose. Over-Drive Magazine lists 40,113 four-door sedans, 17,401 two-door sedans, 11,915 Wagonaires, 5,717 V8 Cruisers and 593 six-cylinder Cruisers. The line's total differs by source and by basis: Ate Up With Motor gives 74,201 sales, Over-Drive Magazine gives production just above 75,000, and Wikipedia gives sales of around 77,000. Whichever figure is used, even the registry's nearly 2,000 R-engine Larks and Hawks for two model years together would be under 3 percent of a single year's Larks.^3,1,7

Ate Up With Motor describes 1963 Lark sales as a decline, down to 74,201. The Super Lark arrived in April, late in the 1963 model year. Sherwood Egbert, the president who had pushed the Avanti from sketch to showroom and whose R-series engines now powered the Super Lark, left the company because of stomach cancer, the article records, and that in December 1963 Studebaker shut down production in South Bend, while its Canadian operations continued.^1,1

The Super Lark was a sensible idea on paper. It took an engine Studebaker had already developed for the Avanti, fitted it to the compact with the brakes and axle to match, and sold it as a package any Lark buyer could order. Its measured performance was strong, and it could be ordered in any body from a sedan to a convertible. What it lacked was time. Its known production is 52 convertibles with R engines and an unknown number of other Larks.^1,2,6

The 1963 Lark therefore has two stories. The larger one is a compact line of about 75,000 cars in a year of falling sales at a company about to leave South Bend. The smaller one is a supercharged Lark reaching 132 mph at Bonneville and a Car Life test car running 16.2 seconds in the quarter-mile. The few hundred R2 Larks that may have been built are now tracked through registries and club records, because no Studebaker production figure for them has been found.^3,1,5