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Now here’s something you don’t see every day. This is a bullet-nose 1951 Studebaker Starlight Coupe that’s been built to live up to it’s name—it’ll fly like a speeding bullet. It belongs to, and was built by, Phil Beirnes of Enumclaw, Washington, and this is the first show that he’s had it out to. “With all this work into it everyone says I ought to go show it,” he told us. “I’m a newbie!”
The Studebaker Starlight coupe is a great car to do something like this to. The front end look works really well with the pro-street style build.
The finished car you see here is the product of 20 years worth of work. “A buddy of mine bought it in ’92 and drove it home,” Phil explained, “But it was a real rust-bucket.” Phil’s buddy asked him to help out with the project, but Phil ended up doing all the work, so he bought it.
Phil really started working on it in 1997, but he changed careers in 1999 and that stalled the project for a while, and he also built a house in the meantime and that slowed things down somewhat as well. It’s been the last four years that he’s really buckled down and started to get serious about building this thing.
Believe it or not, those beautiful headers were hand-made by Phil.
Underneath that fiberglass front end sits a truly impressive drivetrain setup. Phil has a big-block 496 cubic-inch engine fueled by a Holley 650cfm carburetor with a turbo-400 automatic transmission and Ford 9-inch rearend with 3.89.1 gearing and Moser axles in the back. It’s tubbed with Hoosier 18.5-inch tires on the back and has a full-roll cage.
The interior has been upgraded with racing seats, a Hurst shifter, and a truly stunning light brown leather upholstery job. The blue and tan go really well together and make this bullet-nose beauty stand out. It’s also a nice touch that in the midst of all the changes made inside and out on this car, the instruments remain true to the original style.
Just look at leather work inside this car. The bare, blue floors and the leather-wrapped transmission tunnel have us drooling. You'd have to see this in person to really get a feel for how nice it looks.
“I did pretty much all the work myself,” Phil told us. “All the tin work, the headers, everything.” We’re really impressed with the quality craftsmanship of this build and think that Phil did a really good job putting everything together.
The back starlight glass is actually all the original glass that came in the car, it’s just been tinted for a different look. It works really well with the aesthetic of the rest of the car and the black color on the back really adds to the hotrod, racecar look on this old Studebaker.
The deep blue paint really pops in the sunlight.
We love Phil’s Studebaker, and we’d really love to see more of what you folks are driving out there. If you love it, odds are good that we will too, so shoot us an email with a couple pictures and a little information on your ride, you might just see it here as one of our Street Features. We really mean it too. We’ve featured everything from a 1982 Volvo with LS power, to this Studebaker Starlight street machine build. That’s the beauty of the Street Feature series, we want a little of everything.
