...to get one more product onto store shelves without spending a lot of money. There were a bunch of them in this time frame: the Corvair funny with the mid-engine Barracuda's chassis, the dragster kits reconfigured as sand buggies, and others. In the case of the Studebaker, the only new parts were the pieces to attach the body to the chassis. Everything else was already there, in the Piranha or the Trophy Series Studebaker. Nobody ran a '53 Studebaker funny, but then again Revell had one too, and theirs was pieced together also.
--Mark