Over the past couple days, the internet has been doing one of the things it does best, showing the entire population the same pool of things so that if one thing somehow catches people’s attention, it snowballs and becomes a fixture, if only for a moment, on the human collective consciousness. That’s currently happening now – perhaps actually winding down at this point – with a fascination with a young woman and her emphatic concept known now as hawk tuah. It was so pervasive that I found myself helpless to fight trying to come up with an automotive tie-in, which you see up above there.
If, somehow, you’re not familiar with the hawk tuah phenomenon, then first let me congratulate you from waking up from your coma, which I’m sure was no picnic, and I suppose I can just show you the original source.
Here’s the video clip that started it all, simply a woman being asked a question, and answering with a vigorous honesty and an undeniable joie de vivre:
Yes, yes, sage advice for us all. Really, in many ways, this feels like a refreshingly simple and fun thing to go viral, just someone with an exuberant way of expressing herself and everyone was kind of strangely enthralled.
Anyway, if you don’t get the automotive version up there, I’m happy to explain: that’s a Studebaker Hawk, so, the Hawk with the TUAH license plate I hoped would convey the hawk-tuah reference. And, as a bonus, it’s nice to get people thinking about the Studebaker Hawk!
I like Hawks; they’re great-looking cars that had available superchargers and 275 horsepower way back in the 1950s. But I also have a sort of complicated feeling about them, because, as cool as they look, they’re also an example, I think, of how a design can get progressively ruined over time and everyone feeling an urge to needlessly “update” it and add crap.
See, the basic Hawk design started out as the Studebaker Starliner in 1953, a design penned by Bob Bourke, working under legendary industrial designer Raymond Loewy’s team. The car they came up with was, by 1950s standards especially, incredibly sleek and understated and elegant. Remember, 1950s American car design wasn’t really known for elegance or grace; this was an era when designers like Harley Earl would specify the amount of chrome trim he wanted to see on a car in terms of pounds. As in “add 100 more pounds of chrome on that.”
Here, look at this progression of the basic design from its introduction in 1953 (1954 one shown here, but it was basically the same) to the 1957 Hawk:
All these cars are based on the same fundamental body design, but things were added and changed over the years; look how lean and svelte that Starliner was at the beginning, and then you see how the urge to add more chrome, a bigger grille, side trim and so on crept in, until the Hawk design which added a huge central grille and hood bulges and tacked-on indicator light pods on the front fenders and, of course, huge tailfins. They just couldn’t help themselves.
Much like how the Hawk Tuah woman can’t help herself from spitting on that thing, which is also why Matt suggested we add one more automotive Hawk Tuah image:
You’re welcome.
I’m probably to young to not know what this is. But after getting rid of Instagram, this is my only social media now.
Sooooo, thanks?
Well played.
Tuah is Utah spelled sideways. Like Libby the Kid.
“Hawk Tuah” sounds like:
1) the lead character in an obscure sixties television series, wherein a modern day cowboy from the desert southwest solves murders along the Lincoln Highway.
2) a dance move popular in parts of Utah
3) an East German sports car based on Trabant mechanical bits.
Seeing photos of 54 pillarless Starlight coupe, much sleeker than those in your article.
https://journal.classiccars.com/2022/09/16/pick-of-the-day-1953-studebaker-commander-regal-starliner/
The best.
Yes.
Thank you for the Studebaker. Curse you for Hawk Tuah girl.
I had no idea what this was about, aside from seeing the screenshot in a number of places already. Part of it is that I can almost never waste time on IG or ticktock with the sound on (either at work, or around my kids, or walking around in the city), so any video without subtitles is ignored completely by me.
Someone in our neighborhood had a ’55 Hawk in a metallic scarab green that remains one of the best-looking cars I’ve ever seen. Proof that when a designer really nails it, the car will look good forever.
Happy not to know about the Tuah thing, though.
Another benefit I attribute to not having kids is that there is nobody to force-feed me memes and viral junk, so I have no idea what this is about. Love the early Hawks, though. I don’t know what they go for now, but there was a time in the ’90s when nobody seemed to want them and I was going to pick one up if I came across one, but I never found a good one.
Studebaker “Loewy” coupes are so much prettier than any domestic contemporaries of that time period.
But yeah, the design just got busy and lost it’s simplicity and elegance. Surprised you didn’t show the Packard Hawk for how it really fell off the wagon.
I’m just here to comment on how lovely the illustration is at the top of this blog. It’s so, so good.
Jason needs to post the version WITHOUT the license plate.
That’s one of the most beautiful cars of all time. I first saw one in a museum a couple of years ago and bought a 1/18 die cast. I’m not impressed with the representative from Colorado.
Is this the spawn of that “this one time at band camp” girl?
I still have a slightly better understanding of skibidi than I do of hawk tuah, but I’m very pleased that Jason found a reason to provide some Studebaker content.
I somehow made it all the way through that meme without hearing of ‘Hawk tuah!’ but that thang of hers sure is funny.
PS it’s Bob Bourke. Who also helped design the shoebox Ford and the ’49 Mercury.
I actually prefer the Brooke Stevens redesign of Raymond Lowes cars.
Lowes’ designs Other than the Avanti, of course, seem to have aged much more than the Stevens versions.
At the time Mercedes-Benz sort of replaced Packard in Studebaker showrooms so making the Studebaker’s and Mercedes-Benz looks similar made a lot of sense. Eventually, of course, Mercedes acquired the entire Studebaker dealer network. It was pretty smart on Mercedes part essentially acquiring Packard’s customers too.
Tastes Great, Less Filling…or something like that. Such enthusiasm.
A for effort Torch.
Man, I really have been in a coma over the weekend, is that that congresswoman from Georgia?
I don’t think the Thing appreciates that.
God damnit, I enjoyed my cozy spot underneath a rock.
Unless a meme directly involves cats, I’m pretty much blind to it. I do love a Loewy Studebaker, though.
Wow. I’m so happy I got off all social media.
Newsflash. You are still on it. 😉
Crap. You might be right.
Eh. This is internet media, but I’m not sure it’s “social.” “Informative Media”? “Blog Media”?
Are you interacting with a malleable environment or a static one?
It’s fluid and specifically directed by human interaction. Hence, it is social.
It’s potentially static if you don’t read the comments (where’s the fun if you don’t do that). Even if you post a comment but don’t ever read the comments I would consider that static.
Except that the comment section is always expanding in replies, for at least some time. So, that cannot be static if it is growing. Even if a topic reaches its zenith of comments, it has the potential to be referred to or revisited/edited.
Something static would be something like a gravestone head marker. In theory, it can be altered, but it doesn’t evolve independently of its original form. It’s always just a symbolic marker. Posts and replies are opposites of that.
From my theoretical point of view the article is the article and it ends there.This does happen to me at other sites that I check into.If you feel compelled to continue your narrative beyond the original post that’s up to you. The original post is what it is.
Very fair. However, we just saw an example of post-Post editing by DT on his own headline. It’s also not uncommon for redacted and edited statements to be released by (whomever) organizations in regard to their original content.
This is where the times necessitate an adjustment to the definition. In the “olden days”, a newspaper was printed and that was the end of it. The digital world allows for any content to be manipulated at any moment, thereby making it permanently adjustable.
So while I agree with you in theory that the content is an edifice, it’s not indestructible anymore, unless you consider a screenshot an undeniable slot of evidence. Which it is, but it may not live on in that form.
So, is what it is published/downloaded a real and defining delineator of static truth? Yes, and no. Gravity is (apparently) permanent, meanwhile, the written word is no longer so.
Humanity has never seen a time before where “It depends” has ever held as much weight as it does now.
There was a saying, back in the day ” Keep Smiling, The Boss Loves an Idiot”. The Studebaker Hawk deserves better. Very cool cars. The Commodore was very cool, too.
Seconding those who want to return to their comas, ha. Especially since that meme wouldn’t have gone viral the way it did if it had been anyone other than a conventionally attractive young blonde woman *eye roll*
Could’ve done without that while sipping my morning coffee as I attended to the cats’ breakfast, geez. At least those Studebakers, including the baroque-fied reiteratins, are mighty cool so thanks, I guess?
*reiterations. Looks like my morning coffee wasn’t strong enough to make up for spell check being turned off…