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Take the use of disc brakes-the first user was the Studebaker Avanti-using brakes supplied by Bendix-who licensed the design from Girling (as samll British firm). Despite superior performance, drum brakes continued to be used on US built cars till the late 1960's!
It was if the accountants (who ran most of the auto industry) were determined to squeeze every last nickel out of their existing designs.
That attitude came back to bite them 9in the 1970's).
By the way, technically speaking the first American car to use disc brakes was the 1949 Crosley Hotshot I believe. It also raced at Lemans. I guess Studebaker copied Crosley, huh?
Well look, let's be fair. If anyone presents a controversial and/or subjective view of history, they are bound to attract other points of view about what came down.
FOR INSTANCE :shades:
"The Kitchen Table Story" -----thanks for bringing up this most interesting story by the way. It's really a lot of fun to read about----HOWEVER---it is hardly "well-documented" ---if anything, it is clouded in controversy and probably not true.
There is definitely a Studebaker--Ford connection, you are right about that--- but the real story *seems* to be that Ford may have copied parts of a Studebaker design that Studebaker rejected as being too radical for the company.
You can read the whole complex history of it here (quite interesting).
Did Ford Copy a Studebaker Design for the '49?
And I must say I'm pleased to learn that this somewhat supports the idea that Studebaker was a conservative company after all.
Ford changed the Thunderbird to four passengers after they saw the success Studebaker had with the Hawk and sold twice as many in 1958 as they did in 1957. Ford saw Studebaker's success with the Lark and they built the Falcon the following year.
Studebaker offered the Lark with a V-8 and a convertible, Ford followed later. Studebaker took a Lark frame and built an Avanti, Ford took the Falcon and built a Mustang, but Studebaker put the gas tank in a safe place.
Because Studebaker used a separate frame, they were able to build many different body styler including two and 4 door sedans and station wagons. Land cruiser frame became the Hawk and Cruiser. The sedan frame became the Lark and Avanti. There was nothing obsolete about using ladder type frames the 1950s for the reasons stated here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body-on-frame
In the USA the frequent changes in automobile design made it necessary to use a ladder frame rather than monocoque to make it possible to change the design without having to change the chassis, allowing frequent changes and improvements to the car's bodywork and interior (where they were most noticeable to customers) while leaving the chassis and driveline unchanged, and thus keeping cost down and design time short. It was also easy to use the same chassis and driveline for several very different cars. Especially in the days before computer-aided design, this was a big advantage.
During the 1950's monocoque construction was limited to short and usually expensive cars with the exception of Nash and Hudson, which resulted in body styles that could not be easily changed.
What American car companies beside Hudson and Nash used monocoque or unit body construction in the 1950's?
Your one statement here, though, makes no sense to me:
"Ford changed the Thunderbird to four passengers after they saw the success Studebaker had with the Hawk and sold twice as many in 1958 as they did in 1957."
The 57 Thunderbird outsold the Hawk in 1957, didn't it, or real close ??
:confuse:
I think a more accurate explanation is that Ford wanted to expand into a whole new market. The 58 Squarebird is not an imitation of an early Hawk--it has a formal roofline, center console, wrap-around rear seat. If anything, the GT Hawk copied the Thunderbird, don't you think?
In cool weather, air from the passenger side door is vented to the heater located under the passenger seat. Nice warm air comes from that area keeps me warm as I drive with the windows down. That is how a hardtop convertible (proper name) looks best.
The 57 Thunderbird outsold the Hawk in 1957.
I was trying to make the point that the Ford Thunderbird doubled its sales in 1958 by turning into a four passenger car like the Hawk.
In 1955 and 1956, Studebaker was advertising itself as "America's Largest Builder of Sport's Cars." Whether or not that was true, in 1956 Studebaker sold more Hawks than Ford sold Thunderbirds. In 1957, sales were about even.
In 1958, the 4 passeger T-Bird sales zoomed to approximately 38,000. Ford left the two passenger sports car field to Corvette because Ford could sell many more four passenger "sports" cars.
Although I dislike '58 Thunderbird styling (that short wheelbase and long rear overhang slap me in the face), it was the right idea for Ford from a business viewpoint as deliveries totalled 37,892 that model year.
If more people felt like you Studebaker would still be alive.
A nearby restaurant used to have liver and onions on their menu but dropped it when few people ordered. A couple of people couldnt' understand but that's the way it is!
I'd never seen it before. Color, and dramatic in tone ('there's no hilarious celebration'....!), but pretty impressive....this was the No. 5 automaker at the time. I love the view of the big Studebaker car-carrier truck with other Avantis loaded on it, which appears around 4:40 into the video.
As far as Studebaker copying Crosley for disc brakes, I think that's less likely than the Big Three copying Studebaker more than a dozen years after Crosley. The car mags wrote again and again how superior disc brakes were when testing performance Studes. I'm not sure how many magazine reviews of Crosleys there were (definitely not performance Crosleys), and Crosley was even less of an intrusion into the mainstream market than Studebaker was years later.
I'm not seeing any Hawk and T-Bird bloodline other than the GT Hawk duplicating the '58 Bird formal roofline. Just about *everyone* notices that.
The '58 T-Bird was quite a different concept than the Hawk--it had the center console, the formal roofline and the wrap around rear seat---all of which were later duplicated by the likes of Riviera and other 4-place "luxury" cars. The Hawk was not a luxury car by any stretch, so these are two different breeds IMO.
The Hawk was sort of a dead-end niche I think...more like a branch on a larger "GT" tree. I think Studebaker realized this when they produced the GT Hawk, tring to steer the line back towards T-Bird and Riv.
Check out some Golden Hawk interiors online...especially the "400" model which was leather throughout.
The GT Hawk roofline was clearly influenced by the '58-60 Thunderbird. Not sure if the T-Bird has the raised halo portion in the rear, but it's definitely square and has the sail panel moldings similarly. Of course, the T-Bird has the wraparound windshield and upside-down triangle vent windows that the GT doesn't.
Although it doesn't look like it, the Golden Hawk has a much-longer wheelbase.
I had a Golden Hawk. I remember one thing I had to do was insulate the floorboards and firewall from engine noise--to be fair, the car was 8 years old and it was well-cared for, but very loose. It was a foul--handling car, too. I never like it one bit (as if you couldn't tell).
I thought the GT Hawk I had was 10X the car. At the time, a great car for the money. Yet even that was no match for the Riviera in terms of being pampered by luxury features (I actually switched from the GT Hawk to the Riv, and I distinctly remember it being a step up, even if it was clumsier to drive. Of course, I paid for the privilege).
The Riv, ironically, had its own set of problems---persistent overheats. Ultimately, I ended up being disappointed in it for that reason. Seemed incurable.
But my point was---the Riv was way different than a Hawk in its marketing and execution, even if they might look similar on paper. The Riv was done on a fresh sheet of paper--it felt much more modern than the Hawks did.
Uplanderguy replies: Except for Packard, Chevy, Pontiac and some other late-to-the-party-ers.
JLJac Agrees: Uplanderguy understates the auto market in 1953. Ohv V-8s were still new to the market in 1953 and that was the first year that Buick introduced its V-8. . .two years after Studebaker. The list of American car companies that did NOT have an OHV-8 is far longer than those that did have one at that point in time, and that includes everything made by Ford.
Packard did not have its V-8 until 1955, which it sold to American Motors for two years until AMC got its V-8 in 1957.
The hardtop convertible body style was still fresh in 1953 too as stated here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardtop
The trend-setter for mass-production hardtops was General Motors, which launched two-door, pillarless hardtops in 1949 as the Buick Roadmaster Riviera, Oldsmobile 98 Holiday, and Cadillac Coupe de Ville. They were purportedly inspired by the wife of a Buick executive who always drove convertibles, but never lowered the top. The hardtop became extremely popular in the 1950s, and by 1956 every major U.S. automaker offered hardtop coupés and four-door sedans in a particular model lineup.
Studebaker gets criticized for its old frame, although ladder type frames were the industry standard then and made the long-wheel base hardtops possible at an affordable price. Hudson led the way with a more “modern” frame, but it ended up with a car that resisted body style change and you had to pull the transmission out through the passenger compartment to fix it. They were rewarded for their innovation by going out of business sooner than Studebaker.
Studebaker is presented as being too conservative, but was the most innovative independent automaker in the post-war era. Yes, Studebaker still had a flathead six cylinder in 1953, but Ford got its ohv. six cylinder in 1952, Chrysler continued to sell flathead sixes until 1960 and AMC
continued to sell them until 1965.
Old sayings get to be OLD sayings because there is some truth to them. Studebaker was ahead of its time in many ways. In 1953, Studebaker thought that America was ready for smaller, streamlined, fuel efficient vehicles, but at that time, America was in the process of killing off its
smaller cars, Willys, Henry J., Crosley, Hudson Jet. AMC gave up building the small Nash Rambler in 1955.
The time for small efficient American cars did not come until the recession of 1958, when George Romney decided to put the 1950 Nash Rambler back into production as the Rambler American and was hailed as a genius foir putting Geroge Mason's little car back into production. Meanwhile, Ford believed that America wanted a car like the Edsel and we all know how well that turned out.
Studebaker returned to selling small cars in 1959 with the Lark, and by 1960 the Big Three decided that “compact” cars were not such a bad idea after all and sold them by the millions.
Wow. I like hearing details like that about cars from the past!
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
Same with the hardtop. By 1953, the press had been talking about them for 4 years, and the general public did not regard either the hardtop or the V8 as something new and innovative any longer--especially "small" V8s. Fun? Yes. Did they want one? Yes. Was it "new"? No.
Once again, all the hardtop credit went to Buick. When you look in the history books for "the first hardtop" you don't see Studebaker. I mean, who was the 5th person to discover America? Does anyone really care? I don't think so.
Another BIG break-out year for GM was 1955, and once again they got most of the glory and the space in the automotive press. We also saw the first wave of foreign cars coming over in serious numbers, many of them technological wonders, like the Mercedes 300SL and Alfa Romeo Type 101 roadsters and coupes. And Corvette became America's only real sportscar.
Probably the best PR (and perhaps the only serious PR) Studebaker ever got was for two "real" and worthy things IMO---one, the Starlight coupe, and two, Andy Granatelli's exploits with the Avanti (which they had to share with STP).
Whatever genuine merits Studebaker cars had, being a technological leader seems a halo that simply doesn't fit, given everything that was going on at the time.
The argument that other companies also lacked certain kinds of innovation only shows that there was more than one car make lagging behind the leaders.
The term "first" has only one place-setting in other words, and the survivors get to write the history.
http://www.skidmore.edu/~pdwyer/amc/amc_main.htm First, it says that AMC was unlike Studebaker and lasted so long for this reason.
American Motors saved money by using a lot of other companies’ established technologies without the research and development costs. A typical AMC car might have an General Motors ignition system, a Chrysler alternator and a Ford starter. Likewise, you could find essentially the same engine in a 1965 American and an ’80 Concord, a 1966 Classic and a ’71 Matador.
====================================================
AMC became more like Studebaker when it decided to leap into the future with the Pacer powered by a Wankel rotary engine and superior handling from rack-and-pinion steering from GM. Unfortunately, GM never built the rotary engine and I can relate to the problem with the GM rack and pinion steering because my 1996 Chevy has the same problem and I am looking at a bill for $650 to fix it at only 62,000 miles: The article says this:
This change [using six-cyliner engines instead of rotary] added weight, reduced interior space due to the transmission driveshaft hump, and some maintenance tasks difficult, because the back of the long, narrow inline six was fairly inaccessible from the shallow engine compartment. The Pacer also suffered mechanical problems including leaks in its GM-designed rack-and-pinion steering unit, according to Smith, who nonetheless calls the car underrated.
What killed AMC? More than one reason, but at the top of the list is a big one that helped kill Studebaker:
“Militant UAW locals hung tough in negotiations with the result that AMC’s contracts always were non-competitive, and local plant costs were burdensome and higher than those of any other competing plants.”
“For nearly 30 years ... the union got pretty much what it wanted,” Richard A. Calmes, AMC’s vice president for personnel and industrial relations, said in a 1985 interview.
At that time, Kenosha assembly workers received an average hourly wage of $13.44, including a cost-of-living allowance. That was 37 cents an hour above what was paid to comparable workers at GM, the world’s largest automaker. A three-week strike in 1963 didn’t help the company’s fortunes, either.
As it turns out, the Pacer was no leap into the future--more like a leap off a cliff. The Wankel did not become the engine of the future (GM made a wise move for a change) and no car wanted to look much like a Pacer ever again. All I'm seeing in the Pacer was just old tech dressed up in new clothing....agricultural, heavy, gas-hungry, weak 6 cylinder engine, leaf springs, bench seats, the old Chrysler 904 transmission (used in the Dart and Valiant in the early 60s) and drum brakes are the future? :surprise:
Initial sales weren't too shabby actually, but the revolutionary outer skin couldn't save what was essentially a pretty ordinary car underneath. Even a V8 and a floor shift (3-speed) couldn't help it in its last days.
No, I think that ignoring labor costs while blaming Studebaker management for bad decisions and every other reason except labor costs is ignoring reality. Studebaker had bad management because it let the UAW get away with high wages and labor restrictions on work done. High labor costs had a lot to do Studebaker and AMC's demise.
Example No. 1: In 1955 Packard finds out that Studebaker has to sell 260,000 - 282,000 cars per year because of Studebaker's high labor cost, which are sinking Studebaker and taking Packard with it. Studebaker proves that is true by selling 116,000 cars in 1955 at a big loss for Studebaker-Packard. But in 1959, Studebaker makes a big profit by only selling 126,000 cars, and a small profit in 1960 by only selling 120,000 cars. I say that this happened because Nance got tough with the union and got the labor cost down.
What other reason do you have for this change in the break-even point? You can't consistently argue that the cars were that much different after agruing that Studebaker sold the same old cars since the 1930s.
Example No. 2: In January 1985, GM establishes the Saturn Corporation with its own assembly plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee, unique models, and a separate retailer network. I say GM did this to get past the high UAW labor costs in Detroit. Why do you think GM created Saturn?
Example No. 3: Here is a map of US auto assembly plants in the US.
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/vehiclesandfuels/facts/2005/fcvt_fotw383.html Notice how the imported car companies like BMW, Honda, Hyundai, Toyota and Nissan avoid Detroit, Michigan and build in the south and midwest states other than Michigan. I say this is in response to high labor costs. Other reasons are welcome.
Example No 4: The City of Detroit.
Example No. 5: General Motors imposes wage wage and benefit reductions in 2008 as a condition of the government bail out.
2009 BMW 335i, 2003 Corvette cnv. (RIP 2001 Jaguar XK8 cnv and 1985 MB 380SE [the best of the lot])
Oh well the book was better than the movie - which was pretty good itself with Bogart but listed a bit in the screenplay treatment of Willie and May. The point is that even in the movie version Queeg really was undermined by his crew. At least that part of the original story was left intact.
Not to defend obvious management errors at AMC or other domestic car makers, but legacy costs have been a huge problem. Blame the unions? Labor/health care/pension costs can sink a small boat or even a big ship like GM.
it reminds me of this:
One day Sherwood Egbert found a painter sleeping on the job using a cot he brought to work with him for that purpose and the worker defended his right to sleep on the job when he was not painting. Egbert wanted painters to do other things when they were not painting, but union rules did not permit painters to do other work. Egbert actually got into a fight with union members around that time that was on the local TV news.
So Egbert put painters to work painting the inside of the factory when they were not painting cars. He called it “color harmonizing” and included it in a movie called, “Studebaker Today.” Here is a clip about “color harmonizing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Va3zF0DK6Wo
Although the workers in the movie seem happy about this new idea and are saying wonderful things about it, the joke in the factory was not to mess with Mr. Egbert or you might end up on the “color harmonizing” detail.
I have added to my own post to note that Sherwood Egbert was an ex-Marine and notice how old most of the employees are in the video clip.
Studebaker also shafted most of its employees (anyone under 60) by defaulting on their the pensions and retirement plans. Many employees got little--a great deal of them got nothing.
Do they celebrate this at the Studebaker Museum? Kinda doubt it.
This pension default so outraged the employees and the government that time and time again, the Studebaker pension debacle was brought up in debate on new labor laws. Memory of this treatment of employees finally helped to pass the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA).
I wonder if Nance and Egbert lost their entire pensions? I bet not.
There are two sides to every story don't you know.
In short, Studebaker had to play "catch-up" for their entire postwar existence. They died of exhaustion.
=================================================
I decided to review the history of the 1949 Ford in Fifty Years of American Automobiles by the Auto editors of Consumer Guide to confirm the story about the Studebaker designers helping design the 1949 Ford by building a model in Mishiwaka in their spare time. That story was confirmed. I then read the following at page 177-178
"The ‘49 was crucial to Ford’s survival. Young Henry Ford II was still scrambling to bring order to the organizational and fiscal chaos he inherited from his grandfather, even as the company continued losing money by the bucketful. But the ‘49 Ford was the most changed Ford since the Model A, and it was much a sensation.
Though wheelbase and engines stayed the same, the ‘49 Ford was three inches lower, fractionally shorter and usefully lighter than the 1946-48 Fords. Even better, it had a modern ladder-type frame with Dearborn’s first fully independent front suspension (via coil springs and upper and lower A-arms) plus a modern rear end with open hotchkiss drive (replacing the torque tube) and parallel longitudinal leaf springs supporting the live rear axle. . .”
===================================================
I have to wonder why the 1953 Studebaker was hopelessly obsolete when it had a "modern ladder type frame' and suspension that Ford did not begin using until 1949.
Therefore, the claim that Studebaker had been building its cars that way since 1934 actually turned out to be a compliment to its advanced engineering because it was 15 years ahead of Ford in frame technology.
If its designers had shown more loyalty to Studebaker instead of designing the car that saved Ford in their spare time, history may have been much different. They must have learned their sense of loyalty from Virgil Exner, who got fired by Raymond Lowey for creating designs in his spare time and went to design for Chrysler to help make that company a leader in automotive styling in the middle of the 1950s.
Studebaker also shafted most of its employees (anyone under 60) by defaulting on their the pensions and retirement plans. Many employees got little--a great deal of them got nothing.
Members of MY family got full and partial pensions from Studebaker before and after it closed. They lived in houses that Studebaker financed. They shopped in grocery stores that Studebaker set up during the Great Depression. They kept warm in winter burning wood from Studebaker instead of more expensive coal. I am not upset about how Studebaker treated them. so why should you be upset about it? Most fromer Studebaker employees have good memories of Studebaker. See Studebaker Less Than They Promised.
Studebaker employees would have been a lot better off with a profit sharing plan like American Motors had if their union had been more cooperative on that issue and the vesting of the pension plan.
My relatives probably would have been proud of me setting the record straight in response to repeated attacks based upon misinformation which makes it seem that Studebaker was dead last in engineering and built a second class product when the opposite was true.
Roll Studebaker.......Roll !!!!!!!!!!!!
I believe the Studebaker Museum did at least once have a display on ERISA being influenced by at least some of what happened in South Bend. The pension fund wasn't fully funded.
There was a PBS special from 1983 called "Studebaker: Less Than They Promised", but one thing that struck me was how everyone they spoke to said they enjoyed working at Studebaker, were treated well, and how they never had the same kind of bond with an employer anywhere else they worked afterwards.
The Studebaker National Museum is an awesome, beautiful, modern place...built in 2005, and the Archives building is a treasure (full of thousands of Studebaker AND Packard papers, blueprints, factory photos, etc.). As fans of an independent, we are extremely lucky to have such a place, but as usual, luck isn't the right word...it's due to passion and dedication of a lot of people over several decades.
Other independents have museums, but I don't think of the scope and archives collection of the Studebaker National Museum's, and ours was built as a museum...in other words, proper climate control and storage.
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3186/23505150- 31_bd43694b5b_s.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.flickr.com/photos/9826125%40N06/2350515- 031/&usg=__YriVWkiS68dUTlmRZ5HI8bvB3n4=&h=75&w=75&sz=5&hl=en&start=15&zoom=0&um=- 1&itbs=1&tbnid=kN2pX8DS3zAnYM:&tbnh=71&tbnw=71&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dstudebaker%2Bz- ip%2Bvan%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26ndsp%3D20%26biw%3D1259%26bih%3D624%26tbm%- 3Disch&ei=rb_STbLMK8PZ0QGw-5HwCw
I do remember them in our small town, mostly 'cause I was a car geek even as a kid and my Dad worked inside the Post Office.
the WEASEL !!
Seriously I've never heard of the M29 Weasel before now. I thought most of Studebaker's war production were those rugged US6 trucks. Now that would be cool to see at a car show. You can still find plastic model kits and die cast toys based on that truck.
http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/multimedia/video/video.html?videoUrl=/sites- /dispatch/videos/2011/05/12/myers-studebaker.xml
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
I liked seeing the Super Hawk in black with the Avanti engine. Although I prefer cars that more typical street cars that I would have seen in Eastern Indiana in a rural area, that one was nice for the bodywork. I doubt any of the other people in the whole county would have had an Avanti engine in their Studebaker.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
My Dad wouldn't have been caught dead in a Studebaker, but by the grace of our little town having a dealer right 'til the end, and a fair amount of the cars around town, I probably wouldn't have been aware of them otherwise.
I recall that the 6-cylinder engine had sludged up worst than a Toyota. I can remember looking at the motor. I think dad had it worked on at the garage where he had bought it. The car had been owned by people in a small town who drove it across town to and from work, only short trips, and was about 1 year old when we bought it used at the Studebaker store in a crossroads village. This was in a day of non-detergent oils.
My best buddy's parents had a sleek Commander in the Hawk shape era. I believe it was a two-door model. Automatic transmission and V8. It was a blue and I believe it was two different blues; I don't think it had a white top. If I remember all kinds of combinations of two-toned cars showed up in Studebakers, a progressive and youthful brand. Some were dark bottom with light top and few adventurous folk has light bottom color with a darker top.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
Thw Weasel was powered by the Champion engine that was first introduced in 1939. A flying car was also powered by the Champion engine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_car_(aircraft). General MacArthur had his personal Weasel for transporting him about the Philippines.
One of the reasons that Studebaker built a new V-8 before it built a new six-cylinder engine after WWII was because its Champion engine was more modern and much lighter than its larger six-cylinder Commander engine. Therefore, the Studebaker V-8 was intended to replace its big six cylinder motor and was not designed to compete with V-8s that powered much heavier cars.
There is nothing wrong with a flathead engine so long as you burn low octane fuel, but it is not a good design for high compression because the intake ports take up too much space. On the positive side, they are quiet take less maintenance and can turn at a high RPM without valve float because they are similar to an overhead cam engine without the troublesome cam chain.
Part of the appeal of the Studebaker Drivers Cub is that Studebaker produced so many types of vehicles.
My Commander was stolen and ended up in the back yard of an abandoned house in South Central LA a week after the Rodney King riots with no wheels, wheel covers, tires, battery or carburator. Jon Myer stocked me up essential parts so that I could rescue it. (That was a night to remember.) Other than the parts just mentioned, the car was not damaged. I miss John Myer a lot. I hope the guys who stole my car sold the six-volt battery to somebody really mean.