Bob's Resource Website (2007) Studillac Info
Tucker (USA) "Studillac", special Studebaker coupe with Cadillac engine installed by Bill Frick Motors. Article in Car LF, 4/54, pp.50-51
Studillac: a Studebaker powered by a Cadillac engine; article in Bond No. 36. Cadillac aficionado, Erik Calvino who lives in Tokyo, Japan, sent this quote from the James Bond website : The car appears to be a black Studebaker convertible. When Felix talks up the car's performance Bond thinks he's spouting nonsense, until Felix stomps the fuel pedal and reveals to Bond the car's hidden abilities. Leiter's car is under the hood. Cadillacs in the 1950s were real performance cars. When the horsepower of the Caddy engine was put into the aerodynamic, lightweight, Loewy designed Studebaker body it yielded a potent, high velocity, weapon! Special rear axle, brakes and transmission had to be added to handle the extra power. This car is not the product of Fleming's fertile imagination. Such a car was actually produced by a specialty shop in New York. It was dubbed with the singularly un-mellifluous sobriquet, "Studillac".
Frick, Bill: He was associated with Bill Frick Motors, located at 1000 Sunrise Highway, Rockville Center, Long Island, NY. Frick was born in Berlin, Germany at the end of WW1 but moved to the USA before he was 18. His first engine-swap was to put a 1924 Dodge 4-cylinder engine in a Model A Ford. His job consisted in performance-tuning automobile engines. He built a V8-60 midget racer in the winter of 1946 and won races with it. In 1949 Phil Walters [aka "Ted Tappett"] was his driver. American rally driver, Tom Cole, introduced Briggs Cunningham to Frick and Walters; they built for him a 140 mph Fordillac, with a Cadillac engine, brakes and a Borg-Warner Lincoln transmission. Cunningham bought over Frick-Tappett Motors after the 1950 Le Mans race in which two stock Cadillacs and a Cadillac-engined barquette nicknamed "Le Monstre" [the "Monster"] did rather well. In the Fifties Frick built some sports cars that used Cadillac motors (he had used also Ford, Allard and Studebaker engines earlier). He built about 100 "Fordillacs" and, in 1953 and 1954, the "Studillac" from the 1953 Studebaker Starlight coupe [see CL 4/54]. What Frick wanted most was to build an "exotic", Ferrari-like sports car; one of his three Vignale-bodied "Bill Frick Special" coupes is photographed in "Alpha Auto", a French-language magazine collection of the Seventies; these cars were powered by a 331.1 ci Cadillac V8, developing 250HP at 4600 rpm. The cars used the Hydra-Matic transmission ; wheel base was 110". The estimated value of a Frick special in 1989 was $10,000-15,000.
Studillac Notes
(From Q-branch)
In the novel Fleming introduced us to one of my favourite, and certainly one of the least known, cars of the 1950's. On a drive to Saratoga Bond gets his first look at the new car of his best friend, Felix Leiter. The car appears to be a black Studebaker convertible. When Felix talks up the car's performance Bond thinks he's spouting nonsense, until Felix stomps the fuel pedal and reveals to Bond the car's hidden abilities. Leiter's car is a special custom job, a Studebaker with a powerful Cadillac engine under the hood. Cadillacs in the 1950s were real performance cars. When the horsepower of the Caddy engine was put into the aerodynamic, light weight,Loewy designed Studabaker body it yielded a potent, high velocity, weapon!
Special rear axle, brakes and transmission had to be added to handle the
extra power.
This car is not the product of Fleming's fertile imagination. Such a car was actually produced by a specialty shop in New York. It was dubbed with the singularly un-mellifluous sobriquet, "Studillac". But that aside, this car is a real honey!
I know of no source today for the Studillac, but the Raymond Loewy designed Studebaker sports coupes of the mid 1950's are beautiful and special enough on their own to warrant admiration.
Studebaker got their start way back in 1853 making Conestoga wagons. To celebrate their 100 year anniversary in 1953 the firm hired the famous French designer, Raymond Loewy to design their new line of cars. The result was what has been called "America's prettiest car of the 50s". They had adecidedly European look to them. I expect this is why Fleming chose the car for Felix, and why Fleming allowed Bond to admire it. It was that same European styling that was to put Loewy at odds with Studebaker just two years later. They came to consider his styling "Un-American". Chrome and tail fins were starting to really catch on and Loewy wanted no part of either. He kept them as minimal as possible on later designs, but at the time of Diamonds Are Forever his designs were still pure, and today one of these beautiful cars can be had for the low price of $5,500.