According to the Studebaker Drivers Club Forum website and subsequent media reports, the board of trustees of the Studebaker National Museum in South Bend, Indiana, has voted to bid on what’s being known as “the maximum essential Studebaker vehicle bought on this u. S. Inside the beyond 50 years.” The automobile is the Hunt-Jenkins Special that raced in the Indianapolis 500 in 1931 and, simply weeks later, set a record in triumphing the Pikes Peak Hill Climb.
The car, consigned from the Robert W. Valpey Collection, has been consigned to the Gooding & Company Pebble Beach auction scheduled for August sixteen-17. The auction residence has set a pre-sale envisioned fee on the automobile of $500,000 to $750,000. The museum board has devoted “a sizeable amount of budget” towards the possible purchase and asking Studebaker Drivers Club individuals and others for pledges closer to the attempt to win the car at auction. To take part, humans are requested to email the museum’s executive director, Patrick Slebonick, at PSlebonick@studebakermuseum.Org, to do so with the aid of August 14, and to include your call, cope with, smartphone quantity and pledge quantity. Then, if the museum is successful in its bidding on the auto, you’ll be requested to make right for your pledge.
The Hunt-Jenkins Special changed into constructed in a partnership between George Hunt, Studebaker’s director of testing, and racer Ab Jenkins, who had set pace and patience data at Bonneville in Studebaker cars. Hunt ordered a racing chassis from Indy-based Rigling and Henning and had “Pops” Dreyer create aluminum bodywork. An ornamental grille reduces down from a stock Studebaker President and a pointed tail. At its proving grounds in South Bend, Studebaker equipped a high-compression 336cid directly-8 engine and diverse different Studebaker additives, including brakes, axles, transmission, and steering gear.
Tony Gulotta, a former member of the Packard Cable racing crew, qualified the auto nineteenth, however, within 1 mph of the 1931 pole-sitter’s velocity. Gulotta changed into struggling with the lead past due within the race while he became stuck up in a crash at the 167th lap after the Hunt Special ran over oil and hit the wall. The Studebaker turned into repaired and despatched to Pikes Peake, in which three-time winner Chuck Myers gained the hill climb by way of 15 seconds, placing a path document of 17 mins, 10.3 seconds. Studebaker built four vehicles based on the Special for the 1932 race, and they finished 3rd, 12th, thirteenth, and 15th. The No. 37 car, owned by using Jenkins, additionally raced, finishing 6th. Studebaker displayed the No. 37 vehicles at the 1933 New York auto show. It raced again at Indy in 1933, wearing No. 47 and finishing 12th.
