Trivia #03-Henry and Clem Studebaker

Long before Detroit’s muscle car wars, two Indiana blacksmiths built a company that would eventually produce one of the era’s most overlooked performance machines. The Studebaker brothers started with horseshoes, survived a Civil War wagon contract, and only reluctantly entered the automobile business decades later. Their company’s final act included a supercharged V8 capable of matching contemporaries from Detroit’s Big Three. It simply ran out of time to prove it.

Trivia Jan, 16Â to 22

In 1852 two brothers, Henry and Clem Studebaker open the doorÂ to the â€œStudebaker Wagon Worksâ€. This small company in South Bend Indiana is destined to become the largest of its type in the world..
Bicycle mechanics, Frank and Charles Duryea, in 1896, are the first to manufacture and sell cars in the USA.
All totalled the USA produces 2,500 motorized vehicles in 1899. The Manufacturers in New England are mainly working with steam and electric power, while the mid-west, with poorer roads and a lack of electricity are developing gasoline powered cars and stationary motors, with farmers as the largest consumer group there.
Henry Ford, in Â his own car, wins his first (and only) auto race on October 10, 1901, at Grosse Point Michigan when he scores a victory over race driver Alexander Winton.
In 1908 brothers Fred and Charles Fisher register the fledgling Fisher Body Company, created to manufacture automobile bodies.
Citroen, in 1908 is the largest car manufacturer in Europe and the fourth largest car manufacturerÂ in the world.
General Motors is the first to introduce a fully automatic transmission in October, 1939. The â€œ:Hydra-Matic-Driveâ€ was designed by Earl Thompson.

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Two blacksmiths with sixty-eight dollars between them had no idea they were laying the foundation for a company that would eventually build one of the most underrated supercharged performance cars of the 1960s. Henry and Clem Studebaker’s little wagon shop in South Bend, Indiana started out making horseshoes and hardware, not horsepower. It would take another half-century, a Civil War government contract, and a reluctant pivot into the automobile business before the Studebaker name meant anything to gearheads. By the time it finally did, the company was already living on borrowed time. So how did a 19th-century wagon works end up producing one of Detroit’s forgotten performance icons?

From Horseshoes to a Government Contract

Henry and Clem opened their blacksmith shop in February 1852, making metal parts for freight wagons before expanding into full wagons and, by 1857, carriages. A contract to build wagons for the U.S. government forced them to develop a faster timber-aging process just to keep up with demand. Henry left the business in 1858 — as a Dunkard and committed pacifist, he reportedly had little taste for supplying war materials — and younger brother John Mohler Studebaker bought in. By 1868, annual sales topped $350,000 and the Studebaker Brothers Manufacturing Company was formally born.

The Reluctant Leap Into Automobiles

Studebaker didn’t rush into cars. The company built its first electric vehicle in 1902 and didn’t offer a gasoline-powered model until 1904, running wagon and automobile production side by side for years while the market sorted itself out. That caution paid off longer than most of its wagon-era competitors managed, carrying Studebaker through both World Wars as a major American manufacturer.

A Supercharged Swan Song

Studebaker’s final chapter included a genuine performance surprise: the 1963-64 Avanti and Super Lark, offered with the R-series 289-cubic-inch V8 in naturally aspirated R1 form (240 hp) or Paxton-supercharged R2 form (roughly 289-290 hp), plus a rare, bored-out 304.5-cubic-inch R3 variant that pushed past 335 horsepower for the handful of buyers who found one. It was a legitimate rival to anything Detroit’s Big Three were building at the time. The South Bend plant closed in December 1963, and Studebaker exited the auto business entirely by 1966 — just as its performance credentials were finally catching up to its history.

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