I know this is an old post, but people are still buying Studebakers for an investment, or to collect.
Here's my take on Studebaker reliability. The only Studebaker I owned was a 63 Avante R2, but since I owned it, and other classic cars, I went to a lot of car shows in the 35 years I did this stuff and talked to a lot of people.
Studebaker had spotty quality control, as did a lot of car companies back then, this was not a unique problem, some models were sometimes very good, and other times very bad. Let me explain. Avanti's, as did the Golden Hawk, and the Hawk series, had issues with the frame flexing and eventually allowing water from rain to come through the windshield and back window, but not all of them did that, but enough to make customers upset. My Avanti was one of those that never leaked, and I had it for a long time selling it about 6 years ago. Some of the people I meant along the way would discuss why some leaked water and others didn't, we did know that they all used the same type of window seals, so nothing was different in that regard that anyone knew about, so the only thing we could think of was that some of the cars had better frames, probably came from a different frame builder then the weaker ones. That is subject to argumentation because the internet will tell you that the seals were not made well and that's why they leaked, but those of us who discussed this stuff in-depth think it was a combination of issues, the seals may not have been the best, but if the car didn't flex as much the seals could and would hold up, but since the seals were not made well and a frame would flex it would separate the seals, eventually the seal would fail which would lead to major rusting. Not saying I'm 100% correct on this, but something was going on that caused the majority of the windows to allow rain in but in some, they never had any issues, and the only thing we could come up with was the frame. Those frames in most of the Hawks and the Avanti's were known to flex
Another issue they had was that their V8s would leak oil right from the factory, mine was no exception, shortly after I bought the car, I replaced all the seals with modern seals and the engine never leaked again.
With my Avanti the engine seals were the only problem I ever had with the car, it was extremely reliable, and if I had the car today, I would think nothing of it to jump into it and drive across the nation. I also know from others that the Studebaker pickups, and the Hawks were very reliable as well, but the Lark and the Scotsman were not that great of cars, but they were intended for people who couldn't afford a better car. Of all the cars made in the USA Studebaker overall was the most reliable. Again, keep in mind that cars made in the 50s and very early 60s did not last long, they were considered past their prime by the time they had 50,000 miles on them and so the value of those cars that had over 35,000 miles plummeted on the used car lots, and by the time they got to 50,000 miles it was well known to most people to avoid those.
The reason Studebaker failed wasn't due to them making poor-quality cars, it was due to bad financial handling, and poor management, which was the downfall of many car companies from back then, up to our current era.
