Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:31 — 46.0MB)
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | More
Dean Seavers has long appreciated vintage cars. He’s owned several, a passion that continues a family heritage. Seavers’ now-deceased father worked for General Motors in Fremont, California, and his son learned about mechanics and vehicle history at a young age.
Seavers is also a renaissance man. He likes old stuff in his East Sacramento home. He appreciates craftsmanship from yesterday. Seavers’ interests are represented ideally by his current favorite automobile — a 1961 Studebaker Lark VIII station wagon. He’s owned the car for about three years and seemingly knows every inch of it.
Seavers is our guest on Episode #102 of The Weekly Driver Podcast. Co-hosts Bruce Aldrich and James Raia talk with Seavers at a coffee shop near his downtown Sacramento workplace.
Seavers, a procurement officer for the State of California, sometimes drives his Studebaker to work. But mostly it’s a weekend car and he enjoys working participating in Studebaker clubs of like-minded folks.
The Studebaker company, which celebrated its 100th anniversary in 1952, ceased automobile production in 1966. The Lark was made from 1959 to 1966. Studebaker and Packard were once aligned. Both companies independently and together made heavy vehicles with lots of chrome. The vehicles were simultaneously innovative and problematic.
Studebaker owners are passionate about their cars as any vintage car enthusiasts. Seavers is no exception.
Please join us in this episode, a lively discussion with Seavers. He talks about acquiring parts, working on his vehicle and his appreciation for Studebaker. It’s a manufacturer he believes is largely under-appreciated.
The Weekly Driver Podcast encourages and appreciates feedback from our listeners. Please forward episode links to family, friends and colleagues. And you are welcome to repost links from the podcast to your social media accounts.
Support our podcast by shopping on Amazon.com.
Please send comments and suggestions for new episodes to James Raia via email: [email protected].
All podcast episodes are archived on www.theweeklydriver.com/podcast
Every episode is also available on your preferred podcast platform:
Google Play
iTunes
Spotify
Stitcher
iheartradio
Article Last Updated: September 5, 2019.
- About the Author
- Latest Posts
A sports, travel and business journalist for more than 45 years, James has written the new car review column The Weekly Driver since 2004.
In addition to founding this site in 2004, James writes a Sunday automotive column for The San Jose Mercury and East Bay Times in Walnut Creek, Calif., and monthly auto review and wellness columns for Gulfshore Business, a magazine in Southwest Florida.
An author and contributor to many newspapers, magazines and online publications, co-hosted The Weekly Driver Podcast from 2017 to 2024.
Thanks for being interested in the Studebaker and taking the time to include me in your podcast! I always try to give accurate information, and in the glare of the microphone I kinda spaced out about the lineage of the parts situation – I inadvertently said that Studebaker continued to make parts long after they closed, what I meant to say is that Newman and Altman bought up all the parts from Studebaker Corp and you could get pretty much every factory part well every Studebaker stopped producing cars.
The Los Angeles parts house that I couldn’t come up with the name for was Frost and French, who were big Studebaker dealers on the West Coast. They actually started as a Packard dealership in 1940, and only took on the Studebaker line with the collapse of Packard in 1956. Ironically the same year that the Southern California Studebaker plant in Vernon closed its doors. When the Canadian plant closed in 1966, Frost and French bought up all the new Studebakers they could find and sold these 1966 models well into 1968. They were still a factory service and parts center well into the 1980s.
I just wanted to set the record straight and clarify what was a momentary brain fade.
All the best,
Dean Seavers