The Studebaker Museum – South Bend Indiana

Alert!  If autos and trucks aren’t your ‘thing’, then this post may cause you to doze off.  Nevertheless, automobiles and, more importantly, the companies that built them are critical historical elements that led to America’s economic dominance during the twentieth century.

Even if one isn’t an auto ‘buff’, many of us appreciate new design and automotive innovations as they occurred.  Did your family own a Studebaker?  Mine didn’t but Laurie’s did…

The Studebaker National Museum shares an entrance to The History Museum…the latter which focuses on South Bend Indiana and its history from various viewpoints.  Visitors can buy tickets to visit one or both museums…but we focused on the Studebaker portion of this attraction.

There are 3 floors in the state-of-the-art 55,000 square foot Studebaker museum.  The first floor covers company history and vehicles from the 1800s up to 1934.  The second floor displays vehicles from 1934 onward.  The lower level displays military vehicles and equipment as well as even more automobiles and other items.

Laurie and I had visited the Studebaker Museum…a much earlier iteration…in the late 1970s or early 1980s.  This new museum, completed in 2005, was a whole new experience for us.

The Studebaker Corporation was actually founded in 1858 and it was incorporated in 1868.  It was originally called the Studebaker Brothers Manufacturing Company.  Originally a coachbuilder, the company built wagons, buggies, carriages and harnesses.

The Conestoga wagon shown above predates the company’s founding but it was built in 1835 by John C. Studebaker.  He was preparing for his family’s move from Pennsylvania to Ohio.  Note that the wagon box’s curved shape not only helped stabilize the load, but it also helped when fording streams.

The carriage just to the right of the Conestoga wagon is a 1963 Studebaker Hearse funerary in a landau style.  There is a trap door in the floor of the hearse to allow an attendant to clean the interior while still standing up…

The Studebaker Museum is the owner of the largest collection of U.S. Presidential Carriages.  The collection includes President Grant’s Brewster Landau, President McKinley’s Studebaker Phaeton, President Benjamin Harrison’s Studebaker Brougham and President Lincoln’s open barouche carriage that was built by the Wood Brothers in 1864. 

Lincoln’s carriage was the one that carried him to Ford’s Theater on the night he was assassinated…and from the theater to the home where doctors tried to save his life.  At one time the Studebaker Museum loaned it to the National Museum of American History.  Clement Studebaker bought the vehicle from F.B. Brewer…who had acquired it from President Lincoln’s son Robert shortly after the President’s murder.

At the far right of the first group photo of the Presidential carriages, you can glimpse the Marquis de Lafayette’s Caleche.  This carriage was purchased by Clement Studebaker in 1887.  It had been used by Revolutionary War hero, the Marquis de Lafayette during the French general’s grand tour of the United States in 1824.  How popular was the general in the USA?  65% of the population of New York City turned out to see him!  Heck, the Beatles only had a 0.5% turn out in 1964...

Much to relief of many readers or followers, I didn’t try to take photos of every Studebaker model automobile…or even a fraction of the autos and other vehicles on display at the museum.  What follows is a generous sampling of the vehicles and other Studebaker related products that we observed.

Pictured above is a 1904 Studebaker Model “C”.  It is the oldest surviving gasoline powered Studebaker in existence.  It had a 2 cylinder engine developing 16 HP and it cost $1,600…$55,600 in today’s dollars.  You could purchase a canopy for it for another $150…or another $5,200. 

After 2 years of electric vehicle production…yes, electric vehicles aren’t new…Studebaker introduced its first gas powered vehicles.  Studebaker did the coach work and the General Automotive Company of Cleveland Ohio supplied the rest.

While Studebaker had entered the automotive business in 1902 with its electric vehicles and with gasoline vehicles in 1904, until 1911 the company’s automotive division operated in partnership with other companies when building its vehicles.  These companies included the Garford Company, the E-M-F Company and the Flanders Automobile Company.  While all of the vehicles were sold under the name “Studebaker Automobile Company”, the first gasoline automobiles that were fully built by Studebaker weren’t marketed until August of 1912.

Studebaker reached an agreement in 1909 to sell vehicles manufactured by E.M. F. (Everett-Metzger-Flanders) and they purchased E.M.F. in 1911.  The auto pictured above is a 1910 E.M.F. “30” Touring model.  It cost $1,000, and it had a 4 cylinder engine that produced 30 horsepower.  I was stunned to learn that over 40,000 E.M.F. vehicles were sold between 1909 and 1913 when the E.M.F. name was retired. 

Why would early auto makers sign up to market their vehicles with the Studebaker Company?  Given its huge wagon and carriage business, Studebaker had over 12,000 dealerships set up from coast-to-coast!  No small automaker could match such a behemoth.  

Studebaker was busy with more than automobiles during WWI, which was also known as “The Great War”.  Great Britain contracted for 500 of the horse drawn water carts as shown at the front of the photo.  They were equipped with 2 pumps and 2 water filters and they were delivered to the British Army in France.  The horse drawn ambulance in the photo was just one of thousands of supply wagons, ambulances and water carts built by Studebaker during WWI.  The ambulance design hadn’t changed much since the Civil War.  Although motor vehicles were also used during WWI, they would break down or get stuck more easily than a horse drawn wagon.

In addition to the wagons, Studebaker also manufactured 380 4.7” gun carriages, 800,000 155mm shells, mine anchors, plus harnesses and blankets for the thousands of horses involved in the war effort. 

NOTE: It is estimated that over 8,000,000 horses, mules and donkeys died during WWI.  About 2,000,000 of them were killed in action while the remainder died because of poor living conditions. 

This is a 1928 Studebaker Fire Truck.  The chassis was built by Studebaker and then it was outfitted by the Boyer Fire Apparatus Company of Logansport Indiana.  It was purchased new by the St. Joseph Michigan Fire Department for $2,410.  This fire engine was powered by a 6 cylinder engine developing 75 HP.

As I perused my photos I realized that I’d failed to capture a quality photo of one of the most ‘sexy’ Studebaker automobiles, the 1931 Touring Roadster.  So, I borrowed this photo of a beautiful Roadster from the Internet…  Only 6,340 Model 80 Presidents were built by Studebaker in 1931 and the Roadsters were just a small part of that number.  Only 54 of these classic cars are known to exist today.

Of course, neither of the automobiles shown above are exactly wallflowers either… The golden beauty on the left is a 1934 Studebaker “President” and the red stunner on the right is a 1933 model of the “Speedway President”.

The President was Studebaker’s flagship model.  Only about 600 of the President “Speedway” model of all body types were built.  Its name refers to the fact that Studebaker backed teams at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 1932 and 1933.  A Studebaker President came in 3^rd at the 1932 Indianapolis 500 Race. 

Although Studebaker had built some trucks earlier, it was during the 1930s that the company gained a solid foothold in the truck business.  In 1936, the ACE cab-forward line of trucks was introduced.  Its design yielded a 40”/3.5 foot reduction in length.  This smaller footprint allowed for increased maneuverability in tight urban areas.  This line of trucks continued in production into 1940.

Along with other models and sizes including at least 3 lines of pickup trucks, Studebaker also built 219,882 2.5 ton trucks.

Note the lift racks above the truck shown above.  The lower level has these racks all along the walls…with other vehicles in effect stacked on top of those shown below.  More space is needed as this collection grows.

One truck that I remember seeing was the “Zip-Van” USPS postal delivery vehicles.  The company also built bus chassis and during WWII, the company produced military trucks, aircraft engines…and the “Weasel”, a tracked personnel and cargo carrier.  A total of 15,123 “M-29 Weasels” were built to support the allied war effort.  For more information, go to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M29_Weasel.

I really like the looks of this car!  It’s a 1938 State Commander Convertible Sedan.  Only 224 were built and less than a half dozen have survived.  This was the first Studebaker styled by French industrial designer, Raymond Loewy.  Most of us born before 1960 are familiar with some of his designs.  They included the Shell, Exxon, BP and TWA logos as well as the Greyhound Scenic Cruiser bus, the curved Coke machines and the iconic 6.5 oz. Coke bottle. 

As you can tell from the style…the bold streamlined look…Loewy had an affinity for curves.  The color of the Studebaker Convertible Sedan is “Tulip Cream” and it went well with the green leather upholstery.  This car cost $1,365 new, had a 6 cylinder motor developing 90 HP, and it was equipped with fog light, overdrive, a radio and a heater!

This has to be one of the rarest of the rare “woodies” in existence, primarily because this is the only one of this type in existence.  This 6-cylinder 80 HP wood bodied vehicle is the 1947 Studebaker Deluxe Station Wagon.  It was factory built but the line was dropped before actual production began.  This prototype was kept by the engineering department until 1955 when it was discarded in the infield of Studebaker’s Proving Grounds Test Track.  The badly decayed body was retrieved in 1980.  Restoration began in 1994 and it wasn’t completed until 2012! 

Apparently Studebaker had a ‘burial ground’ for many of its prototypes.  The burial ground rumor was finally proven to be true when a number of buried cars were found at one of the company’s former key facilities.  They were so rusted and rotted that they couldn’t be recovered… 

This is the Studebaker image that is part of many older American’s auto memory bank.  It’s all about the ‘radical look’!  Virgil Exner and his team at the company designed the Studebaker Starlight Coupe.  First produced in 1947, (“First by far with a post-war car”), these vehicles introduced the ‘flatback trunk’ vs. the usual tapered look at the time.  In addition, the wrap around rear window was an attention getter.  This car, with its ‘bullet-like and completely different front end and that ‘flat’ trunk appeared to be influenced by the Lockheed P-38 Lightning aircraft.  The overall design, especially with that trunk, prompted a running joke that no one could tell is the car was coming or going.  

The Starlight Coupe also had a large back seat, a new automatic transmission, a 6 cylinder motor developing 102 HP and it cost $2,018.

1950 was the peak production year for Studebaker.  The company built 343,166 automobiles that year.  By way of contrast, Ford built 346,000 F-Series pickup trucks during the same year.  In 1951, Ford produced over 1,000,000 autos.

Studebakers similar in design to this one are what I recall seeing on the roadways and highways in the 1950s.  Not quite as exotic as the Starlight Coupe, you can see where the design for the 1954 Commander came from.  The name “Commander” was applied to various models in Studebaker’s line-up from year to year.  The Commander was the company’s mainstream product in many variations over much of Studebaker’s history.

The 1956 Golden Hawk was Studebaker’s flagship model for its new line of “family sports cars”…definitely a contradiction in terms!  Laurie’s father brought one of these beauties home and Laurie’s mother had to ‘remind him’ that they had a family of 5 to transport. 

In any case, Studebaker built 4,356 of these Golden Hawks in 1956.  They sported a V8 engine that developed 275 HP and they sold for $3,095.  In 1956, this car was one of the fastest autos on the road.  For this year only, the tail fins were made with fiber glass.

The 1957 Golden Hawk 400 was a limited edition auto, with only 41 of them being built.  It sported a supercharged 275 HP engine, hand-buffed leather seats and a special paint job.  It was a fast car…and it cost $4,208.  I do love the look…

This is the Studebaker Avanti.  It was a personal luxury 2-door coupe that the company built and marketed between June 1962 and December 1963.  A ‘halo’ car for Studebaker, the Avanti was marketed as “America’s only four-passenger high-performance personal car.”  ‘Avanti’ in Italian means ‘forward’ or ‘onward’. 

This was yet another design that involved Raymond Loewy and the design team at Studebaker.  The car was designed in just 40 days!  The Avanti’s fiberglass body was fitted on a Studebaker Lark chassis.  A total of 1,200 Avanti’s were built in 1962 with another 4,600 being completed in 1963.  It should be noted that 23,631 Corvettes were built by Chevrolet in 1963…

The Avanti was described as “one of the more significant milestones of the postwar industry”.  It offered a number of safety features as well as high-speed performance.  When it was introduced, it was called ‘the fastest production car in the world’.  A modified Avanti reached over 170 mph with its supercharged 289 cubic-inch engine at the Bonneville Salt Flats.  In total, it broke 29 world speed records…

In the end, although the Avanti was a valiant attempt to save the Studebaker brand, supply and cash flow issues caused the company to close the plant where the Avanti was being built. 

When Studebaker discontinued the Avanti, there were a series of arangements with various builders to continue to manufacture and market derivatives of the Avanti through 2006

This was the last Studebaker that was built…literally the last one.  This particular car rolled off the assembly line in Hamilton Ontario Canada on 3/17/1966.  It is equipped with a V8 engine that produced 195 HP and the retail cost of this model was $2,405. 

This car marked the end of Studebaker’s 114 years of vehicle production under the company’s name.  This particular car was driven for 2 years by company executives before it was added to the museum’s collection.  FYI, many of the workers who built this specific car inscribed their names or initials on the chassis or other parts of the car.

The Studebaker Museum is nicely done although as I previously noted, more space to exhibit the extensive collection of Studebakers…old and newer…would be an improvement.  If you’re headed either east or west on Interstate 80 between Toledo and Chicago, this museum is just a short drive away as you pass South Bend Indiana.  To learn more about the Studebaker Museum, just go to https://www.studebakermuseum.org/.

Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them…

Thanks for stopping by for a visit!

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave