Studebaker


Studebaker was an American wagon and automobile manufacturer based in South Bend, Indiana with a building at 1600 Broadway in Times Square, Midtown Manhattan, New York City. It was founded in 1852 and incorporated in 1868 as the Studebaker Brothers Manufacturing Company. The firm was originally a coachbuilder, manufacturing wagons, buggies, carriages and harnesses.
Studebaker entered the automotive business in 1902 with electric vehicles and gasoline vehicles in 1904, all sold under the name "Studebaker Automobile Company". Until 1911, its automotive division operated in partnership with the Garford Company of Elyria, Ohio, and after 1909 with the E-M-F Company and with the Flanders Automobile Company. The first gasoline automobiles to be fully manufactured by Studebaker were marketed in August 1912and over the next 50 years, the company established a reputation for quality, durability and reliability.
After an unsuccessful 1954 merger with Packard and failure to solve chronic post-WWII cash flow problems, the 'Studebaker Corporation' name was restored in 1962. When this happened the South Bend plant stopped automobile production on December 20, 1963, and the last Studebaker automobile rolled off the Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, assembly line on March 17, 1966. Studebaker continued as an independent manufacturer before merging with Wagner Electric in May 1967 and then Worthington Corporation in February 1968 to form Studebaker-Worthington.

History

German forebears

The ancestors of the Studebaker family descend from Solingen, Germany. They arrived in America at the port of Philadelphia on September 1, 1736, on the ship Harle, from Rotterdam, Netherlands.. This included Peter Studebaker and his wife Anna Margrethe Studebaker, Clement Studebaker and his wife Anna Catherina Studebaker, and Heinrich Studebaker. In 1918, Albert Russel Erskine, Studebaker Corporation president, wrote the book, History of the Studebaker Corporation, including the 1918 annual report, "written for the information of the 3,000 stockholders of The Studebaker Corporation." The 12,000 dealers in its products living throughout the world, its 15,000 employees, and numberless friends." This book was verified by lawyers, accountants, and all board members, and was a legal document. In the same book, Erskine accurately wrote that Peter Studebaker was the "wagon-maker, which trade later became the foundation of the family fortune and the corporation which now bears his name."
John Studebaker's sons, Henry and Clement Studebaker, started the wagon business in 1852, which later became the foundation of the family fortune and the corporation that now bears their name. John Studebaker, father of the five brothers who began the Studebaker Corporation, was the son of Clement Studebaker Jr. John Clement Studebaker was born on February 8, 1799, in Westmoreland, Pennsylvania, and died in 1877 in South Bend, St. Joseph, Indiana. John Studebaker moved to Ohio in 1835 with his wife, Rebecca .

The five brothers

The five sons were, in order of birth: Henry, Clement, John Mohler, Peter Everst, and Jacob Franklin. The boys had five sisters. Photographs of the brothers and their parents are reproduced in the 1918 company history, which was written by Erskine after he became president, in memory of John M., whose portrait appears on the front cover.

18th-century colonial family business

In 1740, Peter Studebaker, master of the German Cutler Guild, built his home on a property known as "Bakers Lookout." The first Studebaker wagon factory was also built in the same year, where he began forging and tempering steel & seasoning wood. In this factory, Peter manufactured everything, all necessities, including products he had previously made in Solingen, Germany, and naturally wagons. Peter owned property on both sides of the Conococheague Creek, so he built a bridge over the creek in 1747. In 1740, the Bakers Lookout 100-acre land patent in Hagerstown, Maryland, was the first of many land patents to be acquired by Studebaker. Peter purchased approximately 1500 acres in what is now known as the State of Maryland. The home still stands today.
In 1747, Peter Studebaker built a road across his properties, which became known as the Broadfording Wagon Road. It allowed heavy traffic to reach the wagon and forging services on Baker's Lookout that were instrumental in expanding the west. The Maryland Historical Trust WA-I-306 writes 04/03/2001, that this road was "One of Washington County's earliest thoroughfares, Broadfording Road was already in existence in 1747." The wagon transportation industry boomed. On the property, Broadfording Wagon Road, built in 1740 by Peter Studebaker, went directly through the property to allow access from the home to the factory and to the mill.
Although Peter's life in the colonies of America was short, less than 18 years, the family business flourished through his descendants and apprentices. They expanded the vast land holdings, enlarging the Studebaker family business and its industrious wagon-making region. Peter's trade secrets were passed from father to son, generation to generation. The Studebaker family business plan was to gradually purchase vast amounts of land, on which they could build industrious farms with mills and facilities to make and sell wagons, each identical to the set-up on Bakers Lookout, industrious farms, much acreage, on which one finds the necessary resources: lumber, iron ore, oil shale and land selected with stream, spring, or river to hydropower factories, mills and equipment. Peter's technology enabled the expansion of the family business through the famous Conestoga and Prairie Schooner wagon designs. Peter's trade was the stepping-stone that expanded the transportation industry. Thomas E. Bonsall wrote, "Much more than the story of a family business; it is also, in microcosm, the story of the industrial development of America." Peter Studebaker died in the mid-1750s.

End of horse-drawn era

John M. Studebaker had always viewed the automobile as complementary to the horse-drawn wagon, pointing out that the expense of maintaining a car might be beyond the resources of a small farmer. In 1918, when Erskine's history of the firm was published, the annual capacity of the seven Studebaker plants was 100,000 automobiles, 75,000 horse-drawn vehicles, and about $10,000,000 worth of automobile and vehicle spare parts. In the preceding seven years, 466,962 horse-drawn vehicles had been sold, as against 277,035 automobiles, but the trend was all too clear. The regular manufacture of horse-drawn vehicles ended when Erskine ordered the removal of the last wagon gear in 1919. To its range of cars, Studebaker would now add a truck line to replace the horse-drawn wagons. Buses, fire engines, and even small rail locomotive-kits were produced using the same powerful six-cylinder engines.
Number of motor vehicles produced by Studebaker:
  • 1902 – 20 electric vehicles
  • 1902–1912 – 1,841 electric vehicles
  • 1904–1910 – 2,481 gasoline vehicles
  • 1909 – 8,132 vehicles
  • 1910 – 15,300 vehicles
  • 1911 – 22,555 vehicles
  • 1912 – 28,623 vehicles
  • 1913 – 35,410 vehicles
  • 1914 – 35,460 vehicles
  • 1915 – 46,845 vehicles
  • 1916 – 65,885 vehicles
  • 1917 – 42,357 vehicles
  • 1918 – 23,864 vehicles
  • 1919 – 39,356 vehicles
  • 1920 – 51,474 vehicles
  • 1921 – 66,643 vehicles
  • 1922 – 110,269 vehicles
  • 1923 – 145,167 vehicles
  • 1924 – 110,240 vehicles
  • 1925 – 134,664 vehicles
  • 1926 – 111,315 vehicles
  • 1949 – 199,460 vehicles
  • 1950 – 268,226 vehicles

    Studebaker automobiles 1897–1966

In the beginning

In 1895, John M. Studebaker's son-in-law, Fred Fish, urged the development of 'a practical horseless carriage'. When, on Peter Studebaker's death, Fish became chairman of the executive committee in 1897, the firm had an engineer working on a motor vehicle. At first, Studebaker opted for electric over gasoline propulsion. While manufacturing its own Studebaker Electric vehicles from 1902 to 1911, the company entered into body-manufacturing and distribution agreements with two makers of gasoline-powered vehicles, Garford of Elyria, Ohio, and the Everitt-Metzger-Flanders Company of Detroit and Walkerville, Ontario. Studebaker began making gasoline-engined cars in partnership with Garford in 1904.

Studebaker marque established in 1911

In 1910, it was decided to refinance and incorporate as the Studebaker Corporation, which was concluded on February 14, 1911, under New Jersey laws. The company discontinued making electric vehicles that same year. The financing was handled by Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs who provided board representatives including Henry Goldman whose contribution was especially esteemed.
After taking over E-M-F's Detroit facilities, Studebaker sought to remedy customer dissatisfaction complaints by paying mechanics to visit each disgruntled owner and replace defective parts in their vehicles, at a total cost of US$1 million. The worst problem was rear-axle failure. Hendry comments that the frenzied testing resulted in Studebaker's aim to design 'for life'—and the consequent emergence of "a series of really rugged cars... the famous Big Six and Special Six" listed at $2,350. From that time, Studebaker's own marque was put on all new automobiles produced at the former E-M-F facilities as an assurance that the vehicles were well built.
In 1913, the company experienced the first major labor strike in the automotive industry, the 1913 Studebaker strike.

Engineering advances from WWI

The corporation benefited from enormous orders cabled by the British government at the outbreak of World War I. They included 3,000 transport wagons, 20,000 sets of artillery harness, 60,000 artillery saddles, and ambulances, as well as hundreds of cars purchased through the London office. Similar orders were received from the governments of France and Russia.
The 1913 six-cylinder models were the first cars to employ the important advancement of monobloc engine casting, which became associated with a production-economy drive in the years of the war. At that time, a 28-year-old university graduate engineer, Fred M. Zeder, was appointed chief engineer. He was the first of a trio of brilliant technicians, with Owen R. Skelton and Carl Breer, who launched the successful 1918 models, and were known as "The Three Musketeers". They left in 1920 to form a consultancy, later to become the nucleus of Chrysler Engineering. The replacement chief engineer was Guy P. Henry, who introduced molybdenum steel, an improved clutch design, and presided over the six-cylinders-only policy favored by new president Albert Russel Erskine, who replaced Fred Fish in July 1915.