A CAR LOVER'S STORY!

The Studebaker National Museum in South Bend, Indiana

What Might Have Been!

Studebaker Cars on Display

The Champion

The Starliner had more orders than the company could fill!

The 1953 Packard Caribbean: A year before the merger with Packard

My Dad & Uncle owned 1951 Mayfairs
This is a 1953 Executive that differed little

1956: A company in trouble still producing innovative designs
This is the Packard Patrician.

The 1962 Avanti lives on today with Avanti Automobile Company!

The Last Ditch Effort to mate Packard & Studebaker's
Strapped for cash, it was merely cosmetics.

Rear Photo of The Last Model

Gee, if you're a rocker, I guess you'd have to be Jeff Beck to appreciate a good car story or two, since he restores hot rods when he isn't touring. One of my hobbies is collecting vintage 1/18 scale die cast automobile models. I've had a love affair with cars since I was 6 years old. Yesterday, I spoke with one of my best friends who informed me that there is a strong rumor that GM officials may have been "asleep at the wheel" and allowed the defunct Oldsmobile brand Copyrights to elapse in 2006. Rumor has it that a clerk at the U.S. Copyright office informed a relative who works with Toyota, and they snapped up the Oldsmobile branding for a mere $5,000 (US) filing fee. (Let's hope this is a joke). Olds was always a fine automobile that is well remembered for the sporty 1972 442 V-8 convertibles. But in latter years, the brand was lackluster and was phased out by General Motors in 2004. More news on that later.

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My collection cars of choice are roughly from the 1940-1970 period. Particularly in the 1950's era when designers such as Raymond Loewy and others created absolutely stunning works of art that stimulated the imagination and made the world more interesting than the homogenized cars of today. My car, to cite an example, looks as homogenized as a refrigerator rolling down the boulevard. But this story is full of intrigue, "what might have been" (my favorite theme) and just plain bad decision-making. It involves two one-time powerhouses: Packard and Studebaker.

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The Studebaker-Packard Corporation was created in 1954 when Packard Motor Car Company of Detroit, Michigan purchased an ailing but equally enigmatic Studebaker Corporation of South Bend Indiana. Both companies produced incredibly beautiful works of art when it came to automobiles. Here's the rub: Studebaker was larger with a huge dealer network, but Packard had a stronger balance sheet and a better executive team. The hope was that both companies would stabilize financially and beefed up their product line. Packard president James Nance and Nash-Kelvinator Corporation president George Mason would merge Studebaker-Packard with Nash-Kelvinator and Hudson Motor Car Company to become American Motors, which would have become the third-largest car maker in America. Tragedy struck when Mason suddenly died and George Romney (father of Mitt Romney) succeeded Mason. Romney, as the story goes cared little about the car business and arguments over strategies and parts sharing killed off Nance and Mason's dreams of sharing a common platform for the combined automobiles. Things grew worse when Packard executives discovered that Studebaker had been--shall we say "less than forthcoming"--with their true financial condition. To give you an example, Studebaker's break-even point was 282,000 cars sold in one year; the company was hanging by their proverbial fingernails selling 82,000 cars in 1954. It got worse when 30% of Studebaker's big dealer network abandoned them by 1956.

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By the summer of 1956, Studebaker-Packard was in deep financial trouble. The banks refused to lend them money to buy time and correct this disaster. In a plain example of poor judgment, Studebaker-Packard entered into a management agreement with Curtis-Wright Corporation. C-W was led by Roy T. Hurley, insisted on major changes. In the move of a testosterone-driven idiot, Studebaker-Packard's defense contracts and plants where were cherry picked by Curtis-Wright, and worse, stockholders demanded changes. In one of the worst moves in the history of American manufacturing, Hurley decided to shut down Packard production in Detroit, Michigan which had much more square footage to produce large and small cars in favor of Studebaker's much smaller South Bend, Indiana plant. He focused on smaller economy cars at a time when Cadillac was making big money on larger vehicles. The final Packards for 1957 and 1958 were essentially window dressing cobbled together to offer the public a fresh looking car when the changes were cosmetic. The final Packard rolled off the assembly line on July 13, 1958. James Nance left for a stable job at Curtis-Wright before Ford Motor Company recruited him to work on the Edsel project (which failed during the recession of 1958, through no fault of his own). He left the auto business and ultimately became Chairman and CEO of Cleveland National Bank in 1962 and Chairman of Cleveland State University. He died in 1984. Sherwood Egbert was hired to shut down Studebaker and diversify the company. But instead, he fell in love with the innovation he saw within Studebaker, however, he led an effort to develop the famous sports car called The Avanti! Diagnosed with cancer he was eased out of the company and died in 1963. Studebaker rolled it's last car off the assembly line in 1966. The photos above represent the artistic imagination of the best designers. Some young investors bought the Packard name and developed a concept car, but it unclear if they were able to progress further. Meanwhile, The Avanti sports car continues to live on today! For you Jeep Sahara owners, American Motors WAS formed and Jeep was part of that car line. In fact, until 2007, the "flat 6" engine was owed to Nash.

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A Toast to Car Lovers Everywhere!