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studebaker

The cars used to be fairly popular around here. The neighbor right to the north had a new Lark. Probably one of the last new ones sold around here.
 
Seen a lot of them. Rode in some. We called them South Bend Cadilacs. Ha...You aren't old enough to have seen them.
 
Use to see them a lot. A guy I went to school with had one. Last summer there was a restored one for sale in Lake City by me. I had forgotten how small they were. I wanted to stop and look at it but was warned by my wife. LOL
 
Good High school friend owned a 1/2 ton PU with a Supercharged (factory to the engine) Hawk V8 it was nice. I didn't drive it much.
 
We had a 51 at the house I lived in at college. Two guys went in together and paid $150 for it. We drove it all over until they had an accident one night and totaled it.
 
Studebaker Brothers go back further than motor vehicles. During the American Civil War Studebaker built wagons , cannon carriages , wheeled munitions carts and other War machinery for the Union army.
 
YEP,, had a 1949 an Aunt gave me when I was 15. that was in 1957.
What was odd ? ? starter button under the clutch ? or under the accelerator ?? Never drove it on a road, no plate.
I also had a 1949 Chev. that did get on the road...
built that from two Chev., when barely 15. fun,fun !
 
About 20 years ago I bought a pretty decent all original Commander, 1941. Handled and drove real good. No muffler on it and when it idled down you could barely hear it run, very smooth.
 
Yes, I owned and drove 3 , and still own 2
A 51 Land Cruiser V8, a 58 and 59 silver Hawk.

Good cars, but they did not / could not keep up with the big three during the 50's horse power race.

The largest Stude V8 was I believe a 305, used in the fiberglas Avanti sports car. After they combined with Packard, they traded engines between brands. I remember seeing Stude President with a 352 Packard V8 and a small Packard with a supercharged stude 289 engine.
The last few years of Their existence,(64-66 ?) they used Chevy V8's I believe 283 and 327.
 
When in high school, an underclassman got one. We all laughed him into the corner till we tried to keep up with him! It was a '57 (I think) Golden Hawk, and it would out run every Ford, Chevy and Mopar in the school. Then we were jealous.
 
My Dad had a 1952 2 ton truck with a dump body. At his sawmill we cut up all the slabs and edgeings they went down a chute up a conveyor into the truck and were sold for firewood. We had to be 12 years old to run the cutoff saw. Everything in the mill was run off the IH UD18 power unit through shafts and belts. I would like to find a Studebaker truck for my next project.
 
My first pickup was a 1954 Studebaker and I built and raced a 1951 Studebaker stock car. Stock car pictures some where but none of the pickup. Bought the pickup with a bad engine for 150.00 and a good engine at a junk yard for 100.00. Drove it for a coupla years and I am not sure what my wife sold it for so I could buy a van in the mid 1960's.
 
Do these count? I have a bullet nose from a '49 or '50, plus a utility trailer made from a 1949 Studebaker truck box. I've hauled as much as 2,200 pounds of crushed rock in it. :)
 
Yep, sometime in the early 60s Dad bought a1947 Studebaker pickup from a man in our neighborhood. Looked kinda funny when compared to Ford and Chevy trucks, but ran like a sewing machine and got great gas mileage! Dad overhauled the motor and one day the wiring shorted under the dash, didn't hurt the truck, but needed completely rewired. I begged Dad to let me take it and re-wire it and even offered to pay for the tags and insurance, but he let my BIL use the bed and front axle and make a trailer. I eventually got what was left, found another truck for parts and was going to fix it up, but then my wife started complaining about that "ugly old truck" so in a weaker moment, I sold it. The man I sold it to fixed it up, re-powered it, and painted it. I still see it once in a while. Sure do wish I had put my foot down (in the proper spot) and kept it.
 
Guy up the road from me has been dragging them out of the weeds and rebuilding them for 50 years. There's almost always an old Studebaker in his yard for sale as well as parts cars all over his junkyard.
 
Had a 51 Commander 4 door, V8, 3 on tree + overdrive.
Traded my 50 Chev 2 door + 30 bucks for it with my local friendly gas station owner. My kid sister called it my 2 row cornpicker. Front end looked like the ones on transport in third row of pics. Didn't really like the way it drove, so after 4 months traded to get my old Chev back. Guy wouldn't give me cash difference, but did throw in a pair of new snow tires.
Willie
 
The local Catholic priest always drove a new Studebaker. He said all the others were built by the Jews. When they came with Chevy engines, he kept his old one.
 
(quoted from post at 17:48:28 02/16/15) The local Catholic priest always drove a new Studebaker. He said all the others were built by the Jews. When they came with Chevy engines, he kept his old one.
Click to expand...

Not very "Christian" of him
 
I have this one, doesn't look nearly as nice. My grandfather bought it new in 1946. I drove hauling wheat when I turned 16. Goal is to someday fix it up. Want you to understand that I copied this one from the group of a previous post. Didn't have a picture of mine to post
a183157.jpg
 
My Grandpa on Mom's side had a purple 4dr sedan, early to mid 50's model that was to be my first car when I started driving. Never got to drive it, but rode in it many times. He totaled it before I got it, so I lucked out and got a really nice 57 Pontiac Starchief coupe, Would love to have that one back. John
 
I have a motor from a 1 1/2 ton studebaker truck and some extra parts. A cousin of the man I bought the farm from cut the truck up for scrap. If he would have put a battery and gas in the truck he could have drove it away. If someone is interested in the parts email me. I would like to see them go to someone who can use them.
Bill
 
Times must have been good because in 1954 Dad bought he and mom both new ones. Little box looking thing called a lark. Were real poplar here even the police department had the things. My grand father had a big saw mill and I remember this guy from St Louis got to coming after cypress lumber. He drove a two ton Studebaker truck and would stack the lumber up on the bed and when he got to the top of the cab would let it come on out over the cab. Seriously overloaded in those days. Pretty tough old truck.
 
RRlund, you probably weren't any older than me in '56 or so but I've got 4 yard sticks (2 square ones) from "Huntoon Motor Sales" in Breckenridge/Wheeler , Mi. Sold Packard/Studebaker. The square ones are from Studebaker Spring Roundup 1956. I think it was same Huntoon that later had AMC in between St Louis/Alma.
 
Just read an article this winter where in the late 30's Studebaker offered an optional Hercules diesel engine. Also during world war 2 Studebaker build some JX Hercules gas engines for the war effort. Some of those found there way into model BG Cletracs. Does anyone know of any of those old Hercules powered trucks?
 
I was at the local airport when a B-17 was making a stopover. Walking around it I looked up and saw four Studebaker engines.
 
There were a bunch of them in our family. My aunt had a 40's era, not sure exactly what year. Then she had an early fifties black convertible. One of my brothers had a '50, then he bought a nearly new '53. Got drafted and sold it to another brother who kept it until about '57. Another brother had a '55 Commander, and later a '57 Silver Hawk. I got to drive the '55 Commander quite a bit. It would run 115 MPH in second gear overdrive, but slowed down to 110 when you shifted to high. They were very good cars. Had a Hillholder, electric wipers when the others were vacuum, never saw one without overdrive. Pretty fast little cars, and fun to drive.
 

My dad brought a 59 Silver Hawk in 1972 it was spose to be my first car but it turned out to be a rust bucket from ell... He traded it for a 69 plymouth station wagon and I had to buy my own car... :cry: I still have a craving for a Hawk...
 
As a kid up until the age of three or four before moving over to Elkhart, I grew up in South Bend. Seems to me from memory that any family that lived in South Bend that had two vehicles, one was a Studebaker. The other was a GM, Ford, or Chrysler product, but the second was a Studebaker. We had Larks, Hawks, and a Champ. Grandfather had a Commander, and aunts and uncles had a variety as well.

The thing that killed Studebaker was half of the workers wouldn't show up for work on any given day, stay home while the other half that did show up clocked them in and out as though they were there before they themselves hung out in the bathrooms and such playing cards. Next day, flipped around. A few years ago I went out of my way to drive past the old factory, which I am sure has since been torn down, and the area was not a good one. Well run down, impoverished. I pulled over and tried to imagine what it might have been like to build and assemble cars and trucks in a four story building.

Mark
 
Mark, I am surprised the old studebaker plant is not making 'travel trailers' now ! ;-) I live a bit north of Sturgis, MI. but Dad was a 'Hoosier'!
 
That name rings a bell. There was a dealer in Stanton that sold Studebaker and Allis Chalmers if memory serves me right. Another one right down the street was Massey Harris and Nash.
 
Actually, I think that I heard something a few months ago about it having been torn down. It was a big building, still standing after setting empty for about 50 years I guess. I don't remember how I ended up over near there, but since I was, I went out of my way. That was a pretty big building, and I imagine all wood floors and beams. Had uncles work there and some over at Bendix too. Had one killed at Bendix pouring molten metal into a mold that had too wet or moist sand that exploded when the metal hit it. He got coated from head to toe with molten metal.

Mark
 
Studebakers burnt so much oil that they had to invent STP oil treatment... STP stands for "Studebaker Packard Corp".
 
I had a 51 Studebaker. It ended up as scrap metal like most of my old cars. I have friend who has a Studebaker wagon. They made these before cars. Stan
 
Interesting, there weren't any pics of the thousands of 6x6's that Studebaker built for the military during WWII. A lot of them were sent to Russia during the war. they looked very similar to the more common GMC CCKW 2-1/2 ton 6x6. the employees had quota of work each day. If your quota of seats was 100, when you got 100 done you went home for the day. Lots of guys went home at noon every day. No wonder they failed.
 
(quoted from post at 16:31:34 02/16/15) Studebaker Brothers go back further than motor vehicles. During the American Civil War Studebaker built wagons , cannon carriages , wheeled munitions carts and other War machinery for the Union army.
Click to expand...

Studebaker also built the Budweiser parade wagons.
 
I own a '62 model 2 ton dump truck. I bought the Heil dump body at a local junkyard and installed it. The picture is at the local scrap yard getting unloaded. My truck has the heavy duty 289 V8 which is equipped with stellite exhaust valves, rotocaps, metal timing gears, forged steel crank, and trimetal main bearings. It has a 5 speed with two speed timken rear. It is rated for 23000 gross but once I accidently overloaded it with 8 tons of wet topsoil and handled it OK. They made some great trucks in my opinion.
a183219.jpg
 
Studebaker was shut down because the NY money men decided it was more profitable to steal the pension fund than it was to build cars.
 
There is almost nothing left of the Studebaker plant. They are building new industral park there along with other things. The Studebaker Avanti was the last cars built at the plant and they went bankrupt and closed in around 1986 or 1987.
 
One of the Studebaker brothers came out during the gold rush and made a fortune building wheel barrows for the miners around Grass Valley, CA
 
Your link didn't work so looked on my own and came up with this. It was blue with solid sideboards and sometimes we would stand up pieces of slabwood to make sideboards higher. All the wood was cut to length, I think he $25 a load, really just wanted to get rid of it. The transmission shifter was worn and it would get stuck in 2nd and reverse at the same time!!! You would have to unscrew shifter fell around with it, get in proper place to slide one of the rails back to neutral then put it back in the right place for the other gear. It had the flathead 6 with a four speed and two speed rear. He also had log bunks he could bolt on to haul logs but only did that if the 6x6 was broken down. Here's a picture of the first 6x6 he used for a log truck.
a183229.jpg

a183229.jpg

a183230.jpg
 
Packards were NOT bad oil burners. They were the top end luxury car of the era. When Packards were built, Cadillac was SECOND BEST.
Also, STP stands for Scientifically Treated Petroleum.
 
Never got to drive one but a few crossed paths with my family. My Dad got a '49 when he was in high school, drove the heck out of it until he found a deal on a '53 Packard convertible. Gave the '49 to his little brother who drove it quite a bit more until he upgraded to a Chevy. The Studebaker sat out at the shop for quite a while, one day they were visiting an Aunt and found out she was walking to town because her husband blew up there Plymouth. Dad and Uncle David hatched a plan, as soon as their routes were done on Saturday they rolled the old Studebaker into one of the stalls, rubbed margarine on the windows and little bit of chrome trim and painted it with black Rusteoleum, painted the rims pink and rolled it out in the sun to dry. About that time the rest of the trucks came in from the routes down the dirt road to the dump. Dad said surprisingly the paint didn't pick up to much dirt. When they gave it to their Aunt you'd thought they'd given her a new Cadillac, she kept the car even after they bought another one. Eventually her husband had it out one night while he was drinking, forgot to check the oil and blew it up, they tell me it had about 180,000 miles on it at that time.

Before they got packer bodies on the route trucks Grandpa had a Studebaker truck, dad said they had a lot of problems with clutch linkage, Eventually they took the part that kept bending and heated it cherry red and quenched it, dad said that just moved the problem a little farther down the clutch linkage, it went away when they updated the route truck to International KB-7s with Leach packer bodies.

One of my Great Grandma's brothers always drove Studebakers, yellow ones he was on a regular trade cycle about the time Studebaker went broke he bought one early so he could get his last new Studebaker. Evidently he hadn't saved enough money for his down payment because he lost it to the bank and ended moving in with one of his nieces down state.

The last one I had any contact with or rode in occurred in Tennessee, one of our friends from Church had Studebakers and Saturns. He was a service tech for IBM and said he made service calls in a Studebaker up until GM came out with Saturns and he bought one. Among his collection was a Lark 8 (8 cylinder with air conditioning) a Champ pickup, an Avanti (bought it out of a cotton field in Mississippi put and engine in it and drove it for 10 years) and a Sliding roof station wagon (raised his first family with it it had 359,000 miles on it) and a project car for his step-son the last South Bend built Commander.
 
my daughter interned at the Studebaker museum last summer.

They had her going thru old archives (papers)

Interesting the amount of stuff that was never gone thru yet even though the company has been out of business for 50 years now.

Mom had a couple Larks before I was born (before she met dad even).

There are actually a few buildings left around town but the old buildings shown above are gone. Pretty sad... pretty sad all that's left of the Oliver works is the power house.

Would have loved to have seen South Bend back in the hay day in the early/mid 1950s when Stude, Oliver and Bendix were going full bore.

The company never recovered from the high union wages they had to give into in the early 50's. Was down hill after that. Oliver had similar issues but not as bad but the Oliver family had lost interest too and sold. Disappointing, that even though the studebaker museum in on the oliver mansion property there is pretty much no Oliver farm equipment around. Just a prototype planter unit in the basement.
 
I had a 49 3/4 ton pick up that I bought with a spun insert, Guy wanted it worse than me, so I did not get to run it. I did have a 1951 Commander V-8 automatic that would run like the proverbial scalded dog. It only showed 100 MPH but the needle would go beyond that. Only problem was the price to buy front end parts. It had the air cooled transmission that was the same as Ford at that time. Good car in it's day.
 
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