Rare Rides: The Very Luxurious 1958 Studebaker Golden Hawk

Corey Lewis
by Corey Lewis

Rare Rides has featured a couple of Studebaker offerings in the past, both of which were family-hauling wagons. Today’s Studebaker is a more luxurious and less capacious hardtop coupe. Let’s have a look at a rare 1958 Golden Hawk.

The late Fifties were an unfortunate time at the newly-formed Studebaker-Packard company. The combined operation was the result of Packard’s purchase of Studebaker in 1954. Packard was a smaller company than Studebaker, but had a stronger balance sheet and leadership group. Unfortunately, Studebaker hadn’t quite been honest about its financial position, and it was all downhill from there. But the company still made cars while it floundered, and the Hawk offerings were important in the coupe-loving Fifties.

Based on Studebaker’s Champion Starliner coupe introduced for 1953, designer Raymond Loewy drew up a family of Hawk coupes for the 1956 model year. The entry-level Flight Hawk was accompanied by the Power Hawk, Sky Hawk, and premium Golden Hawk at Studebaker dealerships. Though all four models were introduced in ’56, only the Golden Hawk made it through to a second and third model year.

Upright styling on the new Hawk incorporated a bulging hood and fins at the rear, all the rage in 1956. The hood had a function: It contained a larger engine than the Champion, a 5.8-liter (352 cubic inch) Packard V8 producing 275 horsepower. A muscle car of the time, the Golden Hawk had an excellent power-to-weight ratio that was second only to the much more expensive Chrysler 300B. The old Packard mill was a bit heavy, so Studebaker put an even heavier engine in for 1957. New that year was a 4.7-liter (289 cubic inch) supercharged Studebaker V8. It had the same 275 horsepower as the previous engine, but increased top speed.

The Flight, Power, and Sky Hawks were replaced by a single Silver Hawk in 1957 that still played second fiddle to the Golden Hawk. An additional Hawk offering for 1958 was over at Packard dealerships, where it was sportiest of the four Packardbakers offered that year. 1958 was the last time any new Packards were offered.

The Final Golden Hawks were produced in 1958, riding lower on new 14-inch wheels. There were also new exterior emblems and two-tone paint schemes. For its final year, suspension and drivetrain changes meant the rear seat held three passengers instead of two. Just 878 Golden Hawks rolled off the line in 1958. Silver Hawks were offered in 1959, before a restyling and renaming to Hawk for 1960 and 1961. Further styling changes transformed the Hawk once more, and it became Gran Turismo Hawk for 1962 through 1964. By that point, Studebaker was winding down its model line before full closure in 1967.

Today’s lovely gold and white Rare Ride comes up at the Sotheby’s auction on August 29th, and is estimated to go for between $30,000 and $40,000.

[Images: Sotheby’s]

Corey Lewis
Corey Lewis

Interested in lots of cars and their various historical contexts. Started writing articles for TTAC in late 2016, when my first posts were QOTDs. From there I started a few new series like Rare Rides, Buy/Drive/Burn, Abandoned History, and most recently Rare Rides Icons. Operating from a home base in Cincinnati, Ohio, a relative auto journalist dead zone. Many of my articles are prompted by something I'll see on social media that sparks my interest and causes me to research. Finding articles and information from the early days of the internet and beyond that covers the little details lost to time: trim packages, color and wheel choices, interior fabrics. Beyond those, I'm fascinated by automotive industry experiments, both failures and successes. Lately I've taken an interest in AI, and generating "what if" type images for car models long dead. Reincarnating a modern Toyota Paseo, Lincoln Mark IX, or Isuzu Trooper through a text prompt is fun. Fun to post them on Twitter too, and watch people overreact. To that end, the social media I use most is Twitter, @CoreyLewis86. I also contribute pieces for Forbes Wheels and Forbes Home.

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  • Pwrwrench Pwrwrench on Aug 27, 2019

    My father had a Hawk of some sort for a short while in the late 1950s. It was all white. When it was gone I remember asking why. He said there was something mechanical wrong with it. Since I was about six years old I had little understanding of such things. I don't recall what came directly after the Hawk, but later he had a couple of Lark convertibles. Then a TR4A, a Sunbeam Tiger 260, and an Alfa Duetto Spider. Of course I wish someone had given me a warehouse to store them all. Always wonder which one would sell for more today. BTW for the demographic question, he was a college professor when he had the Hawk.

  • Jeff S Jeff S on Aug 27, 2019

    True the Golden Hawk predated the T-Bird and the Gran Prix but that is the closest comparison I could think of to what the Hawk represented. The 4 seat T-Bird first appeared in MY 1958 and the Grand Prix 1962. But the Avanti introduced in 1962 was even more unique predating most of the personal luxury cars and performance cars if you count Mustang, Camaro, Grand Prix, Chevelle SS, Monte Carlo, Olds 442, GTO, Cougar and most Mopars. The Corvette predated both the Golden Hawk and the Avanti but the Corvette would be considered more sports car than luxury.

    • SPPPP SPPPP on Aug 27, 2019

      Good comparisons. This Golden Hawk looks quite pleasant, if a little baroque.

  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.
  • Jalop1991 what, no Turbo trim?
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