Car Show Will Take Place August 18th
The Studebakers Are Returning
It has been four years since fifty Avanti’s and Studebaker’s with a hundred members were at the Grissom Ait Museum for the first combined meet of the Indianapolis and Michiana chapters of the Studebaker Drivers Club and the Indiana Chapter of the Avanti Owners Association International.
They will be returning on August 18, 2018 starting at 9:00 AM and at this meet we are expecting more cars as we have invited the South Bend Oackard Club, the South ern Indiana Hudson Club and the Chicago Avanti Chapter to join us at the Grissom Air Museum for our second meet.
The Studebaker Driver Club is the largest single marque automobile club in the world representing over 12,000 Studebaker members who own every type of Studebaker built from Presidents to the famous Golden Hawk and, of course, the Avanti. Studebaker Corp manufactured over four million cars and trucks, mainly in South Bend, Indiana, from 1902 till they went out of the car manufacturing business in 1966 with the last car built in Hamilton, Ontario Canada.
The Avanti Owners Association International represents over 2000 Avanti owners worldwide with the Indiana Shapter being the largest chapter in the AOAI with 170 members.
The Avanti automonile is a fiberglass coupe first manufactured by Studebaker Corporation in South Bend in 1962. They manufactured 4,645 Avanti’s there until December 20, 1963 when Studebaker shut down all production in South Bend and moved to Canada and no longer built the Avanti. Starting in 1965 the Avanti was built by five different corporations in four different locations until going out of production in 2007 in Cancun, Mexico.
Local Peru resident, and longtime Avanti owner Max Starkey who is also Secretary/Treasurer of the Indiana Avanti Chapter, will be chairman of this combined meet. Tom Jennings, Grissom Air Museum Director, will be the key note speaker for the event and will give his presentation at 3:00 PM. Tom formally worked at the Ford Museum at Dearborn, Michigan and is quite familiar with all the cars that will be present at this event.
Starkey said, “the people visiting the Grissom Air Museum are welcome to listen to the presentation and view the many award winning Studebakers and Avantis which will be displayed among the planes.