Star Studebaker
Terry Frye is one of those guys who has some pretty tall standards for his collector vehicles. He restores them himself, and he sets the bar pretty high.
A few years back, he took a rare 1947 Studebaker M-5 pickup and turned it from a basket case into a stunning No. 1 condition show piece. There may not be a nicer example of its breed.
It would be hard to do a better resurrection job than he performed on the M-5, but Frye may have topped himself with his latest prize: an even rarer 1936 Studebaker Dictator coupe. Like the pickup, it took about four years to bring the Dictator up to concours condition, but the Verona, Wis., resident pulled it off.
The process was a little different this time. The truck was a rusted-out hulk when he started with it. Meanwhile, the Dictator was more of a mystery, and he started out by trading another Studebaker for it.
“I had a 1935 four-door sedan and I bought that in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, and I was driving that around,” recalled Frye. “Well, I went down to South Bend, Indiana, for a meet, and visited the person, Rick Zolas, that owned this car. He was from South Bend and he owned this and had it all apart and was in
