Friday, May 13, 2005

Studebaker Stories

Most people within the sound of my voice have a Studebaker story.  These stories may be rock-solid fact, or they may shine under three or four glossy coats of nostalgia, but even four decades after the company’s demise Studebaker remains an essential part of our region’s history and culture.  So if you live within fifty miles of the company’s old factory complex in downtown South Bend, you too probably have a Studebaker story.

Mine, for example, involves a long-ago family camping trip and a five year old playing in the front seat while everyone else puttered around the campsite.  The child released the parking brake and the Studebaker rolled slowly forward, nudging its classic chrome bullet nose through the wall of the tent.

The full Studebaker story, however, goes far beyond these moments of family misadventure and touches on the broad patterns of American history, values, and dreams.  On my recent trip to the Studebaker National Museum in South Bend, I enjoyed seeing many tantalizing clues to the character of our country.  Walking among the collections there, a person is tempted to think of Studebaker as an American industrial romance, a grand cultural adventure painted on a large canvas.

The company itself fostered this view in the movie it produced in the 1950s to celebrate its centennial. From their very first days in business in 1852, the film’s Studebaker brothers embody the best American business ethics, as they vow to give each customer more than what was promised. When the tiny company lands its first large contract for wagons, they quickly and resourcefully create the new manufacturing plant they need to fill the order. In the 1870s, when fire sweeps through their factories, the brothers consider their obligation to the workers of South Bend and vow to rebuild.

Some visitors to the museum must especially love the 19th century portion of the romance, with the Studebaker wagons playing a part in the great westward expansion and the Civil War. Others treasure the collection of fine carriages used by American presidents, including the carriage that carried Abraham Lincoln to the theater on the night he was killed.  But for many of us the real industrial romance begins in the age of the automobile.

It’s easy to enjoy that portion of the collection.  Although the colors and shapes changed every few years, both the car designers and the American public loved bright chrome bumpers wrapped around sweeping car bodies brushed by wind.  There was a substantial glamour in the 1930s designs – you can easily imagine a gangster or movie star stepping out of one of those beauties. You can even meditate on the occasional blunders of American corporations as you discover how far into the reigns of Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin the Studebaker management continued to try to sell a fabulous car they called the Dictator.

I admire the museum’s collection of advertisements, too, the framed images of bucolic family life, which like the company’s radio and television jingles teach consumers how to place a car at the center of their American dream. Today the automobile is a foregone conclusion, but once upon a time our fellow citizens had to be sold on the idea.

Hidden beneath the surface of that dream is labor, and the museum’s collection has clues about that part of American life as well. There is, for example, a massive skeleton of a truck cab, made out of finely-crafted mahogany.  This form, which was used to create the dies for stamping out sheet metal, would look good in many collections of modern art.

Then there are the employees themselves.  I leave the museum wanting to know more about these men and women who designed the cars, painted the advertisements, hammered the forms, ran the machinery, and sold the cars. In the years ahead, as the Studebaker National Museum continues its service to our community, I look forward to more help in peeling back the layers of nostalgia that surround these beautiful vehicles and understanding more fully who we are as Americans.

Broadcast by Ken Smith on May 13, 2005
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