This is true history involving a classic name that goes back over 200 years!
The Studebaker family migrated from Germany to the US in 1736. The family trade was blacksmithing and by the mid 19th century Henry Studebaker and his sons were making wagons – as America expanded westwards many of the wagons used for the gold rush and pioneering came from Studebaker.
In the 1870s the Studebaker brothers merged their separate businesses to form the Studebaker Brothers Manufacturing Company. With rail taking much of the freight westwards, they started to look at other manufacturing as the wagon business was slowing down.
The company started to look at powered wagons using electricity as the source. They entered into two distribution agreements with other petrol powered manufacturers – Garford of Ohio and Everett-Metzger-Flanders of Detroit and by 1904 they were making petrol based Studebaker branded cars.
During this time both agreements caused problems with the Garford one dropped first due to Garford increasing production at the expense of the Studebaker brand. Then the E-M-F agreement got into difficulty due to poor quality that affected the brand. Studebaker eventually acquired the assets of E-M-F and reformed as the Studebaker Corporation in 1911.
Studebaker added in a truck model as well – a throw back to their heritage. Considering that we are still talking about a very new industry, Studebaker were one of the leading companies and as early as 1926 had built the first US based vehicle development and test centre. In fact if you use Google Earth and search for Bendix Woods in Indiana you will still see the pine trees that were planted spelling out the name Studebaker. I’ll talk more about Bendix later.
Studebaker survived the Great Depression and like many manufacturers during WW2, switched to building for the war effort, in this instance, building trucks for the army.
After the war they switched back to making cars for the civilian population. The post war period was a time of growth for the US and it was the start of the great battle between Ford and General Motors which had a major impact on all other US manufacturers. In addition to this labour costs were increasing and Studebaker started to suffer financially, especially when labour strikes hit their factory in South Bend.
To survive, Studebaker merged with Packard to form the Studebaker-Packard Corporation and when this entity struggled they brought in a management team from Curtiss-Wright an aircraft company. Now, doesn’t history repeat itself, in 2008 Ford who were struggling financially, have employed Alan Mulally an ex Boeing executive to help turn them around!
But back to Studebaker, the recommendation from Curtiss-Wright was to add the distribution of European cars, namely Mercedes-Benz, Auto Union & DKW to the car manufacturing. The name Packard was soon dropped.
During this time, manufacturing of the vehicles had been moved to Ontario in Canada and diversification away from cars was also happening. The company owned Franklin home appliances, STP Oil, a tractor and a generator manufacturer. This diversification caused funds to be reduced to the car division and by 1966 car production had stopped altogether. The development centre was bought by Bendix, a supplier to the company and eventually was passed to the city of New Carlisle as parkland, although the proving grounds are still used by Bosch.
Studebaker became a closed investment company with many subsidiaries, merging to become Studebaker-Worthington, which in turn was acquired by McGraw-Edison who were ultimately bought by Cooper Industries. The leasing division of Studebaker-Worthington is now part of the Main Street Bank of Kingwood, Texas, having been sold by the State Bank of Long Island in April this year.
There have been a few attempts to resurrect the Studebaker name for a car but all have failed. None of these attempts have been endorsed by the Studebaker family although one model, the Studebaker Avanti from 1962 is still being built by Avanti Motors now manufactured in Cancun, Mexico. The current version uses a 4.6 litre 300hp V8 and includes airbags, traction control and all mod cons under a classically styled body.
Studebaker was one of the great pioneers of the motor world and the name still lives on albeit in a different industry.