Studebaker 1946-1966: The Classic Postwar Years

If I were to own only one Studebaker history, this would be it. As with Richard M. Langworth’s other books written in the 1970s (e.g., Hudson, Kaiser-Frazer and Chrysler), this is a refreshingly “old-school” automotive history.

Unlike all too many recent non-scholarly books, you won’t find a dumbed-down presentation with lots of big pictures and skimpy text. Studebaker 1946-66 has a good balance of in-depth business analysis and product information.

Interesting historical tidbits include an artist’s rendering of a 1954 Starliner proposal that integrated styling themes from Studebaker and Hudson, a potential merger partner (p. 76). One of the book’s highlights is a useful discussion of an aborted four-cylinder junior Lark for 1962. Unlike Robert R. Ebert (2013), Langworth blamed the demise of this program on the arrival of Sherwood Egbert (pp. 120-121).

Studebaker 1946-1966 also presented a counterpoint to the widely-held view that the Avanti’s poor sales were due to production delays (pp. 141-142; see excerpt below). Even so, Langworth noted that the future of the Hawk and Avanti was not decided until after the South Bend factory closed — and that a marketing study suggested that ending their production “could diminish customer acceptance” of Studebaker’s lower-priced family cars (pp. 161-162). Unlike Patrick Foster (2008), Langworth did not fan the flames of hope that the automaker’s Canadian operations could have survived (p. 161).

Langworth’s assessment of why Studebaker failed was well-reasoned but grounded in the Detroit groupthink of the 1970s. As a case in point, don’t look here for a Romneyesque dissertation on how lax antitrust policies resulted in the American auto industry losing its competitive edge against foreign automakers. Langworth instead went to great lengths to insist that the Big Three were not culpable in the decline of independent automakers (pp. 164-165).

Interestingly, he didn’t mention that as Defense Secretary, former General Motors CEO Charles Wilson adopted a “narrow-based procurement policy” that benefited General Motors but resulted in the loss of $426 million to Studebaker-Packard during the mid-1950s (Hamlin and Heinmuller, 2002; p. 579).

Langworth is among the Studebaker historians who point to unusually high labor costs as a key disadvantage but offered more specific evidence than most. For example, he stated that in 1954 a major assembler made $2.44 per hour at Studebaker whereas the industry average was $1.98 to $2.00 (p. 70).

Although Langworth itemized the disadvantages that all independents faced, he squarely blamed Studebaker’s demise on management ineptitude (pp. 163-166). His general argument has merit, but Foster appears to be more skeptical than Langworth about the narrative that Studebaker’s 1954 break-even point was an astronomical 282,000 units (for further discussion go here).