Star Stunning

70th Anniversary of this beauty!

Robert E. Bourke of Loewy/Studebaker is credited with the Starliner design.


Beautiful 1953 Starliner, customized & owned by Ian Hendry of Yorba Linda, California.

 
Gliding to earth
a heavenly burst
of stardust

gracefully sleek
igniting our lust

Bourke’s vision
of automotive chic

as enticing
and exciting
as a beautiful women

no american car
ever minimalisticaly finer

a heavenly body
named for its celestial muse
the alluringly stunning
Starliner


 

*

Original stock 1953 Starliner.

rob kistner © 2023

Poetry at: dVerse

 



18 thoughts on “Star Stunning”

    1. And to think, that car was designed and manufactured 70 years ago True! Pretty amazing when you take a look at the clunky hunks that the rest of Detroit was turning out back then in 1953. That Studebaker Starliner design looks better than a great many cars of today.

    1. It was an amazing car in 1953 Kim, way way ahead of its time. Studebaker was too advanced for its own good, the average car buyer struggled to relate and they fell behind in the automotive race. Being headquartered in Indiana also created supply chain problems. After the release in 1962 of the unique Avanti the Studebaker company started getting bad press about their instability, and in 1963 they began heading toward bankruptcy.

    1. Thank you Dwight… 🙂 It is a customized 1953 Studebaker Starliner Commander. A picture of the dealership showroom stock version of the ‘53 is at the bottom of the poem. Even the base, un-customized original was way way ahead of its time for an American car, and still a sleek, beautiful car!

    1. Thank you Bill… 🙂 The 1953 Studebaker Commander Starliner coupe was an iconic milepost of American 4-passenger automotive design. Way ahead of its time. The Chevy Corvette was released in ‘53; but was only 2-passenger, and looked clunky bolted-together compared to the sleek 4-passenger Starliner. Two years later, thr ‘55 Ford Tunderbird had clean, but somewhat boxier lines — was also only 2-passenger. Wasn’t until 1958 that Ford released a 4-passenger Thunderbird, and it had a typical awkward American design-by-commitee look. The ‘53 Studebaker Starliner coupr remains in a class of its own, and, and in my opinion, still the sleekest, most visually balanced, most beautifully designed American 4-passenger coupe ever conceived and built.

  1. She’s a real beauty! We have the Gilmore Car Museum a couple of hours from here that has so many of the beauties of olden days. Mind boggling how big old cars used to be. Seeing them on a TV screen doesn’t do them justice.

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