November 12 -- Studebaker

Studebakers were the cars of the 1950’s that, as much as any others, are responsible for Americans’ images of cars of that era looking like rockets. There were other makes of that era that had more extravagant fins and wilder chrome, but nothing looked quite like a Studebaker when it was driving toward you.

The family story is fun: successful wagon makers since arriving in the U.S. from Germany in the Nineteenth Century, the Studebakers nearly missed the boat at the dawn of America’s automobile age. The family patriarch, J.M., found gasoline-powered cars to be “clumsy, dangerous, noisy brutes which stink to high heave, break down at the worst possible moment, and are a public nuisance.” One noteworthy exhibit is the carriage (there are a lot of them at the museum) that carried Lincoln to Ford’s Theater the night of his unfortunate encounter with James Wilkes Booth. It was being restored when I was there, so I couldn’t get any pictures.

Back to cars, the younger members of the family persuaded J.M. to get into the 20th Century, and the company rapidly became a successful automaker – at one point in the ‘teens becoming the third largest American manufacturer behind Ford and Buick.

The company weathered ups and downs, went into receivership during the 1930’s. The head of the company was so distressed that he shot himself in the heart. The firm emerged from bankruptcy later in the decade with a line of successful mid-priced automobiles. Studebaker had always used solid, strong sounding names for its models: President; Commander; Dictator (the last ditched at the end of the ‘30’s).

During the WWII years, Studebaker manufactured many of the trucks and other vehicles that the U.S., Britain and Russia relied on. In fact, the name “Studebaker” is apparently still used as the generic name for a certain type of truck in Russian. (Does anyone know if this is accurate?)

After the war, Studebaker hired Raymond Loewy to design the company’s products. It also was early to manufacture “compact” cars, which were popular with Americans in the 1960’s. As a smaller car company that made reasonably priced cars, Studebaker never fully found its footing, however especially once Ford and General Motors came out with competitive smaller models. Studebaker’s South Bend plant shut down in 1963, and the company folded a few years later.

One item worthy of note is that the museum has a nice small collection of perfect condition muscle cars – a Mustang, Camaro, GTO, a really nice Plymouth Road Runner (in the picture) and even an AMC SC Rambler.