Parkview Practicality - 1956 Studebaker Commander Station Wagon

Studebaker advertised its station wagons for the 1956 model year as the cars for everyone: “Whether you’re off to work or play…whatever hat it calls for…the great big way to go to it is in one of the new Studebaker station wagons! Blue jeans and Sunday best, graduation gowns and bathing suits are all equally at home in these comfortable, easy-riding, solidly-built beauties.” Though 1956 ultimately proved an ominous year for the Studebaker-Packard Corporation, what with tumbling sales figures and the final shutdown of the Packard plant in Detroit and the West Coast Studebaker assembly line in California, the cars themselves still had their fans. Dave Romani’s father bought a new Studebaker Pelham wagon in 1956. He and his family loved the simple, straightforward two-door wagon, even if the Connecticut winters began claiming it almost immediately.

In 1961, the Romanis sold the Pelham, and the family bought a Pontiac Catalina, but they never forgot the Studebaker they had so enjoyed, buying that same wagon back again in the mid-Sixties, just as Dave was getting behind the wheel. “It was my first driver,” he says. “I learned to drive on it. The one we had in our family was a Pelham model, which was a baseline car. It was a six-cylinder with a standard, in a sort of sea foam green.”

Unfortunately, the tin worm eventually did in the Studebaker, its bite sinking ever deeper. “I drove it when I was 16, just as a runaround school car,” Dave recalls. “And we used it as a utility vehicle at the house. It became somewhat unsafe because it just rotted away from the Connecticut winters. It got so bad that we had to just set the tailgate in place and close the upper part of it and lock it in. The hinges had rotted away, and the floor was pretty well gone. It was probably 1967 that we ended up finishing it off. The radiator had sprung a leak, and it just wasn’t worth fixing.” Perhaps not worth fixing, but certainly the once-sturdy Studebaker made a lasting impression on Dave.

Though he inherited a love for vintage automobiles, along with a few cars, from his father, Dave never lost interest in the model he learned to drive on. “I had some fond memories of the original 1956 Studebaker,” Dave says, “and sort of thought it was a rare car and didn’t see many of them in my travels. I was looking at a magazine and happened to see one advertised—this particular one, actually—in Napa, California.” Simple enough, he bought the car, right? Well, not quite.

“A friend of mine was looking for an old car and didn’t quite know what to get into. We made some plans to go out to California to look at this Studebaker. We never made it to San Francisco or the Napa area. He ended up buying a 1963 Hawk. We just passed on this particular car. Thinking about it down the road, I somewhat regretted it. Believe it or not, a year or so later, it became available again and I went ahead and purchased it.” That was in 1990. Dave flew out West and drove the clean, highly original, black-plate California Parkview wagon around a bit, immediately taking it to a meet in San Luis Obispo before having it shipped back to his Connecticut home.

Unlike his family’s original Pelham wagon, with its six-cylinder engine and three-speed manual transmission, the 1956 wagon shown here came from the midrange Parkview line. Like its sedans in 1956, Studebaker offered its wagons (all two-door models; four-door versions would debut a year later) in three ranges, known as the Pelham, Parkview, and Pinehurst, respectively, akin to the Champion, Commander, and President lines found in other models. The wagons, despite their unique model names, carried fender badges reflecting those more-traditional Studebaker names.

The primary differences between the various ranges in Studebaker’s 1956 station wagons were found under the hood. The basic Pelham wagon made do with Studebaker’s tried-and-true L-head, 185.5-cu.in. straight-six rated at 101 horsepower with 7.8 compression. The Parkview model, considered part of the midrange Commander line, was powered by a 259.2-cu.in. cast-iron overhead-valve V-8, and also featured 7.8 compression and rated at 170 horsepower. Finally, the high-line Pinehurst V-8, equivalent to the President, featured a 289-cu.in. version of the V-8, rated at 210 horsepower with a four-barrel Carter carburetor in the wagon.

Prices reflected the varying ranges in the wagon lineup, with the Pelham carrying a $2,232 base price, the Parkview starting at $2,354, and finally the top-of-the-line Pinehurst stickering at $2,529. Beyond the driveline differences, the higher-line models featured more chrome, with the Pinehurst having the most brightwork. Interior seat patterns also reflected the price difference. All wagons rode on the same 116.5-inch wheelbase and measured 196.7 inches long, shorter than the sedans (200.7 inches) and even the sport Hawk coupes (203.9 inches).

While still carrying the usual bevy of options also available on the sedans, such as power steering, power brakes, and the Flight-O-Matic automatic transmission made by Borg-Warner, the wagons had a few unique options of their own, such as a luggage carrier for the roof and an air mattress suitable for the interior with the seats folded down.

Dave’s Parkview came equipped with the automatic transmission mated to its 259 V-8. Though he bought a wagon that was not quite the same car as the six-cylinder Pelham with its column-shifted three-speed manual, these wagons were, indeed, rare finds, even in 1990. Likewise, Dave didn’t mind “stepping up” to the V-8-powered model at all, as he enjoyed driving it. “During that period of time I owned it, we covered many miles. We drove it all over New England, down to the Smokey Mountains—took it all the way around.” Then the ownership of the Studebaker went for a bit of a detour.

About 10 years into his ownership of the Parkview, Dave’s father passed away. While inheriting a few collector cars, Dave also lost the precious space where he kept the wagon, and the Parkview was sold to another collector, “regretfully,” in 2000. Of course, the story doesn’t end there—not at all. “I traced the car back to the fellow that I sold it to, and it ended up in Montana,” Dave tells us. “He had just recently sold the car; I had missed it by six months. But he forwarded the name of the present owner, and I was able to contact him. I told him if he was ever interested in letting it go, I would still be interested in it.”

In 2010, Dave reacquired the Parkview, its largely original condition still intact, its California black plates going back on the car, and still no rust to speak of. But this time, instead of shipping the car back to the East Coast from Montana, he had it sent to California, from where he began an epic cross-country drive back to Connecticut. Starting in Riverside, Dave headed to various locations in the Golden State, to visit both friends and family and to take in a few stops he visited the first time he bought this Studebaker.

His trip then took him to Reno, Nevada, and then on to Wyoming, after which he dropped down to Elizabeth, Colorado, where the admitted fan of orphan cars was able to visit the Rambler Ranch, a museum dedicated to the cars from AMC and its predecessor companies. From there, the journey took Dave and his Studebaker to the Kansas City, Kansas, area, and finally back on home the rest of the way across the country, with another stop in the Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, area to pick up a friend and visit the AACA Museum in Hershey. At the end of the trip, the odometer on the Studebaker had rung up an additional 4,000 miles.

Getting back into the car for Dave was like slipping into an old glove. “It was quite a trip, and the old Studebaker performed flawlessly,” he says. “I probably averaged around 20 miles per gallon the whole trip. It did use a little oil, probably a total of about seven quarts, only because the valve guides were worn, and I have since replaced them. And the engine uses very little oil now, I am glad to report.” He is also happy to tell us that “It’s one of my favorite cars.” We’re guessing that it won’t be going anywhere anytime soon, now that it has returned to the fold.