OT-Ford-Toyota-Studebaker

skip this if you aren't into trivia & lore.......there are several
versions of this, but the basic plot is correct:


For those who don't know, Studebaker was formed in 1852.....was the
largest vehicle manufacturer in the world by the 1880s (making
carriages, wagons, harnesses, etc) and with sales offices worldwide was
well-positioned to go into automobiles.......in fact was one of the
largest car makers in the 1900's-20s. The Great Depression knocked them
out for a while - they recovered - but so diminished that they couldn't
maintain the same level of engineering & marketing expertise so their
growth stopped which brought about their eventual decline as their scale
of operations couldn't compete with the Big 3.

Even so, they were a major supplier of WWII materiel, and in fact their
best sales year was 1950 (the bullet nose).....hard to believe that
their death plunge came about so rapidly......busted by 1954 and they
managed to drag Packard down with them.

Following the killing of Packard, they embarked on a mad scramble to
diversify: so when the '59 Lark was a hit (it cost virtually nothing
to build as it was just a '53 Stude with the ends cut off) the profits
went into buying unrelated companies rather than improving the auto
product/facilities. and so it went: an outmoded product
year-after-year with sales well below breakeven......but the non-auto
divisions of the corp made money and at some point, management wanted to
deep-six the losing auto division.

one of the difficulties of going out of the car business is honoring all
the contracts you're bound by. For instance, Stude still had about 1100
dealers to whom they had to supply cars to sell......fail to supply the
cars and the corporation was contract bound to buy-back all inventory,
parts, tools, signs, etc. No problem when you stop making DeSotos -
given them Chryslers to sell. But for an independent, another ball
game. Hence, Studebaker-Packard became the first formal importer of
Mercedes cars to the US so they could supply Benz's to dealers when
there were no more Packards.

So Studebaker faced the same situation in the mid 60's when they wanted
to stop Stude production - what to supply the dealers to sell so they
can't sue us? At that time, the Japanese car makers were looking for
ways to enter the North American market.......set up American import
arms? or have an American company import and sell them? maybe even
manufacture Japanese cars in America (what a crazy idea).

So Stude actively investigated the idea of either importing Japanese
cars, or convert some Stude factories to assembling Japanese-designed
cars (whether sold under Stude or Japanese name).

And to investigage/negotiate with the Japanese companies, Stude hired a
law firm......discusssions progressed.......the head attorney goes to
Japan to meet personally with Toyoda.......almost a done deal, except
for a breach of ettiquette when he also called on Nisan. deal off with
both. He reported back to Stude that the Japanese products would not be
accpetable to Americans - forget it. Meanwhile he invested heavily in
forming a new company, Toyota of N. America which began importing the
cars. Oh, the guy was an ex politico by the name of Richard Nixon.

So - how the tables have turned.......how differently things could have
been. BTW, since Stude lost the Toyota deal, they signed with Auto
Union instead and started importing those popular DKW's. But that's how
Audi got their foot in the door.

On Sat, 30 Dec 2006 09:24:14 -0500, (Itsfrom Click)
wrote:

>
>skip this if you aren't into trivia & lore.......there are several
>versions of this, but the basic plot is correct:
>
>

Pretty damn interesting if true.

Ashton Crusher wrote:
> On Sat, 30 Dec 2006 09:24:14 -0500, (Itsfrom Click)
> wrote:
>
>> skip this if you aren't into trivia & lore.......there are several
>> versions of this, but the basic plot is correct:
>>
>>
>
> Pretty damn interesting if true.


Totally true and still in business actually....

http://www.avantimotors.com/

--
“I intended that "not stupid" be a requirement.” – Seth
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