Raymond Loewy Avanti up for auction

“After thirty years in America, South Bend to me still refuses to be anything but Souse Bend. Yet readers will not sail in uncharted waters. Astern and to port, in front and at left, he will meet familiar landmarks: clichés, clichés of all kinds. Clichés to native Americans, but very American to a late citizen.” So wrote French émigré Raymond Loewy in the intro to his memoir Never Leave Well Enough Alone. As man who did more to set the stage for early mid-century American design than perhaps any other, his aesthetic sense became shorthand for an entire era, a kitschy cliché unto itself. He worked in fields as diffuse as department stores, locomotives and soda bottles, but to the gearhead mind, he's best known for his work with Studebaker. His 1950s “Slippery Studes” are beloved of both La Carrera Panamericana entrants and Bonneville aficionados for their fundamentally aerodynamic shape. But the Stude Loewy is most often remembered for is the radical Avanti of 1962. Though the forward-thinking Hail Mary that didn't save the foundering company, the car has continued to be produced on and off by various concerns over the past 50 years. The 1972 Avanti II pictured here was purchased by Loewy from Avanti Motors—a follow-on company based in "Souse" Bend and run by two former Studebaker dealers, Arnold Altman and Leo Newman—and imported to his home in France. It goes on sale at the Bonhams' Les Grandes Marques à Monaco auction on May 11. If the brown Porsche Carrera 2.7 RS up for auction the following day is too rich for your blood, might we suggest taking a stab at Loewy's car? The auction house estimates a sale price somewhere between 35,000 and 50,000 euros.