Tellico Village resident Perry Anthony initially did not plan to purchase a rare Studebaker Avanti earlier this year, but he now has it garaged in Greenback along with several other cars the former collector owns.

The 1984 black Avanti is one of only 200 manufactured, Anthony said.

“Just because the price was right,” he said about why he purchased the car in March.


Villager Jerry Jaffe said that after talking with his cousin, who lived in the Chicago area at the time and was having difficulty selling the Avanti, he decided to get Anthony involved in advertising the vehicle.

Jaffe and Anthony had been friends for about seven years and were involved in a friendly wine tasting group in the Village.

“The only reason I knew that he was involved with cars is that he’s always pulling up in a different car,” Jaffe said, laughing.

Jaffe said he knew Anthony was an “expert” in Ford Thunderbirds.

“OK, that car doesn’t match that description but at least he knows people that are involved in cars,” Jaffe said. “So I said, ‘Perry, would you just do me a favor and call him and see whether you could point him in the right direction?’ Lo and behold, the next thing I know is I get an email from Perry saying that he left with his trailer to go up to Chicago where my cousin used to live and Perry’s coming back with the car.”

Anthony too had difficulty selling the car, which he says was “ahead of its time.”

“I’m a member of the Tellico Village Vintage Vehicles, which is a bunch of old cars, so I circulated it extensively that way,” Anthony said.

“I circulated it through friends all over the country and the people weren’t ready to buy an Avanti. So, I just finally said — I had a conversation with his cousin, Marty, and said, ‘I’m going to have a lot of trouble. I’m really promoting this thing all over the place, happy to do that, but I can’t get anybody to shake out on it so I’m running out of options’.”

“Next thing I knew it was in his driveway,” Jaffe said, laughing.

Now that Anthony has the car, he said he plans to evaluate its mechanical condition and eventually sell it. He said he estimates the car should be ready to sell in spring 2017.

“So I drove up to Winnetka, found out that going 75 miles an hour with a trailer just doesn’t cut it in Chicago,” Anthony said.

“If you’re not going 100 you’re not going anything. It’s amazing. ... So I brought it home, I turned it over to a mechanic that works for me every Tuesday, and we’re in the process of evaluating its condition right now. But it looks nice.”

Anthony said he had no plans to continue collecting cars as he gets older — he’s currently an owner of 12 vehicles — but he could not pass up buying the Avanti because the “price was right.”

“I didn’t know an Avanti from a BLT sandwich,” Anthony said.