Low-Slung Beauty

(See Cover)

On an oval test track outside South Bend, Ind., a red-and-cream Studebaker hard top whisked along the straightaway. It swept into a steeply banked curve, worked up to the outer edge and hung there as it rounded the turn with hardly any slackening of speed. Then, like a dive bomber peeling off for attack, it whipped out of the turn and shot into the straightaway again. Around & around the three-mile track the car whirled, hour after hour. Average speed for eight hours: 75 m.p.h.

After the speed tests came the stability tests; at high speed, the test driver twisted the wheel hard left. The tires squealed as the car rocked far over and skidded around. Then came scores of other tests. The car was sent hurtling around right-angle turns, driven over cunningly contrived bumps that jarred the teeth of the driver (and would have thrown a less-skilled man into the ditch). It was sent splashing through a shallow tank of water. For six months the car was driven, in well-shrouded secrecy, until it had piled up more than 100,000 miles. Not till then did Studebaker Corp. engineers feel that they had worked all the bugs out of its 1953 car.

Secret Out. This week, in showrooms across the nation, it went on display. Long, low and racy, the new model is a completely new breed of car, radically different from anything ever mass-produced in the U.S. It combines the low-slung beauty, sporty look and most of the road-holding qualities of European sports cars with some of the comfort and most of the durability of the American family car.

The new Studebaker is the biggest design gamble in the auto industry since Chrysler's Airflow (which was a flop), a test to see whether Americans will buy a semi-sports car in big quantities. In its gamble, Studebaker staked $27 million for new tools, sure that the growing interest in sports cars indicates an entirely new trend in U.S. auto design. From Belgium's annual auto show in Brussels, where the car was first publicly shown last week, came the first evidence that the bet might pay off. Alongside the fanciest cars of Europe and 20 U.S. makes, the Studebaker was the sensation of the show. "Revolutionary," "spectacular," "beautiful," reported the press. Said Roger Darteyre, auto reporter of Le Soir, Belgium's largest daily, and technical expert for the Belgian Royal Automobile Club: "The Studebaker is the best thing America has done in low suspension ... So far as construction and design are concerned, it's the foremost achievement among American cars."

Studebaker's Chairman and President Harold Sines Vance, whose conservative clothes and serious mien make him seem as out of place in a sports car as a minister on a merry-go-round, was quietly confident this week that his new car would be just as much of a sensation in the U.S. Said he: "We expect to sell at least 150,000 more cars this year than last, the greatest number in our history, and boost our total share of the market from 4 to 6%."

Whistle-Stopper. The new Studebaker's radical styling is not merely for the sake of a new look; many of the changes have a basic engineering purpose. The center of gravity was lowered to lessen sway and make the car hold the road better. The wheelbase was lengthened to 120 1/2 in. for smoother riding, the hood sloped forward for better visibility, the rear fenders were made in two sections (instead of one) for easier and cheaper repairing. The body is almost clear of chrome, and is so well streamlined that at top speeds there is almost no wind whistle.

Studebaker will make the car at first only in a five-passenger hard top and a five-passenger coupe, later will add a convertible. There is a choice of a six-cylinder, 85-h.p., or an eight-cylinder, 120-h.p. engine--little changed from last year: at a time when almost every other automaker is rapidly stepping up the horsepower of his engines, Studebaker's Vance is a holdout. Says he: "100 m.p.h. should be fast enough for anybody."*

To hedge its bet, Studebaker is also bringing out a "bread & butter" line of twelve other models much less radically changed. Nevertheless, Studebaker expects its sports hard top and coupe to catch on so well that it is scheduling 40% of this year's production (350,000 cars) in coupes and hard tops. They are priced at $1,868 to $2,374 (f.o.b. South Bend)--$11 to $113 cheaper than similar models last year. Four-door prices are virtually unchanged ($1,735 to $2,315). Optional equipment: automatic transmission about $220, and power steering $150.

Coming or Going? The new car is the product of the designing skill of Raymond Loewy, a sports car owner himself, and Vance's consuming desire to keep in competition by his policy of calculated risk. In 1947, when Studebaker could have sold anything on wheels and had no need to change its design, it brought out a completely restyled car. Its glassy showcase look and its rounded front and rear stirred up no end of talk--which was just what Vance wanted. He was well aware that Studebaker could not afford to match advertising budgets with motordom's Big Three. The car had to advertise itself. Said Loewy: "We knew it would if it would be fresh and gay and young-looking --what the French call witty."

The 1947 car was witty and everyone kidded it back ("Hey, Mac, are you coming or going?"). It also sold so well that Studebaker's per-share earnings ($8.12) compared favorably with General Motors' and Chrysler's. Buoyed by this success, Loewy later surprised Vance with another specimen of his wit: a quarter-size model of a sports car which eventually turned out to be the 1953 Studebaker. Vance was fascinated, spent hours inspecting the model and suggesting changes. The big decision was made to go into production of the car for 1953--still three years away. It was little enough time. A new chassis had to be designed, the production line altered to turn it out, and the assembly line rearranged for the whole car. There were more than 2,000 other engineering changes, and dozens of new problems to solve. Sample: the sports car was so low that the drive shaft went through the rear seat too close to the top to allow padding. Necessity produced an invention. The rear seat was divided, with a permanent arm rest in the center. Not for a year after the sports-car decision was made did the prototype come out of the factory.

Mixmaster Needed. In a sense, the new car is as old as the auto industry, which was weaned on sports cars and road races. In the first two decades of the century, such iron-armed drivers as Barney Oldfield and Louis Chevrolet were the heroes of the day. In 1906 a Stanley Steamer achieved an unofficial speed of 197 m.p.h. Young bloods roared along the dusty roads in Mercers, Stutzes, Mercedes and Locomobiles, exhausts thundering like Catling guns, driving horses and timid folk into the fields.

But sports cars were for the few; mass production for millions meant a touring car and later a closed car, in which the whole family could ride for thousands of miles in comfort. Sports-car fans scornfully dubbed such cars "jelly molds." Even non-sportsmen have more recently viewed them with alarm. Complained the Automobile Safety Association's President Arthur Stevens: the U.S. driver is "submerged down behind a chromium-draped engine hood, wide, slush-holding fenders, and a sloping, glass, mud-gathering shelf called a windshield, that at times even a Mixmaster couldn't clean." The American Automobile Association, noting the high costs of repairs, scored automakers for designs that "make it more necessary than ever before to replace large segments of the body as a result of damages from accidents." The rugged, reliable American car was far and away the world's best. But couldn't it be better?

Better Answer? The dissatisfaction was mirrored in the postwar hot-rod craze--in which backyard mechanics sought to improve on Detroit's product--and the importation of thousands of foreign cars, such as terrierlike M.G.s, Jaguars, Porsches and Lancias (see color pages). Sports-car clubs sprang up everywhere, and raced their cars at Bridgehampton and Watkins Glen, N.Y., Elkhart Lake, Wis., Pebble Beach, Calif. and Sebring, Fla.

But for the mass of Americans, European sports cars were not a satisfactory answer. Their hard springing rattled the normally pillowed spines of U.S. passengers; they often broke down under the long drives and hard beatings Americans give their cars. They were priced skyhigh, usually from $4,000 to $15,000. In a true sports car, comfort, room and easy riding took a back seat to performance, i.e., roadability, sensitive steering, balance, fast acceleration and speed. Many of the qualities that made an excellent sports car (e.g., a short wheelbase and hard springing to cut down sway) also made the passenger feel as though he were being dragged along the road in a box. So American carmakers, sniffing the trend, set to work to see what they could do.

Home-grown Hot Rods. Nash pioneered with its Nash-Healey, assembled it abroad with a British chassis, an Italian body (by Pinin Farina), and Nash engine and transmission, etc. The car was good enough to take third in the 24-hour Le Mans race in France last year, perhaps the world's toughest. Millionaire Briggs Cunningham built a car with a souped-up Chrysler engine that took fourth in the same race. Some small manufacturers, notably Britain's Allard Motor Co., built cars with Cadillac and Chrysler engines and many standard American parts and saw them lick the ears off finely tuned European sports cars. And in the last Mexican road race, Lincoln sedans came in one, two, three in the stock-car class.

To get in the parade, Buick tricked up is convertible with a new body, the Skylark; Cadillac brought out its El Dorado, Packard its Caribbean, and Oldsmobile its Fiesta. Kaiser-Frazer plans to bring out a fiber-glass plastic roadster this spring. Sports-car fanatics regard these cars as still too big. But even the fanatics were impressed when Chevrolet showed off its new fiber-glass plastic Corvette a fortnight ago. The Corvette, still to be put into production, seemed to have everything the best European sports cars have --except the ultra-high price.

Despite all the new cars, no American automaker thinks there is a big market for a true sports car in the U.S. But a sports-family car is something else again. Says Vance: "Originally, we thought that our sports car would appeal only to younger people. Now we're finding to our surprise that it's appealing to all classes of people."

"My Favorite Heretic." Harold Vance , 62, looks like the last man in the world who would care about sports cars--and speculate on their future popularity. His shoulders are somewhat stooped, perhaps from getting his 6-ft. frame in & out of standard cars. He never stands when he can sit, makes a move only when he has to, and then in leisurely motion. He has never been known to show excitement, is such a picture of unruffled calm that his wife Agnes sometimes refers to him as "the Sphinx." Says Vance placidly: "My blood pressure is normal, and I expect to live to a ripe old age. You don't have to be excited to be earnest."

Vance leads a quiet, 9-to-5 business life, a quieter home life with his wife and two young sons (two older daughters are married). He is no hail-fellow-well-met with Studebaker's dealers, and knows very few of them. He goes in for no sports, is uninterested in the arts, usually reads whodunits, which serve to put him to sleep (usually by 10). His only hobby is a 200-acre farm outside South Bend, which he runs like the chairman of the board; he ever wields a hoe or plows a furrow himself. Though he is an Episcopalian (but no steady churchgoer), he is a prime backer of nearby University of Notre Dame, whose ex-president, Father John J. Cavanaugh (once a Studebaker employee), considers Vance "my favorite heretic."

Underneath the calm exterior, however, the Vance mind operates like a finely tuned engine. "He is always concerned with the hard core of facts," says Father Cavanaugh. "never bothered by the trivial things that worry most mortals."

"That's All Right." Called to Washington last year to head a committee on mobilization, Vance waded through the trivia of bureaucracy, turned out a notable report recommending more stand-by arms plants, smaller stockpiles of military end-items (TIME, Jan. 19). Once he told Defense Secretary Robert Lovett: "Bob, I understand that the Army has 60,000 trucks in Texas just sitting around." The Army investigated. Within weeks Studebaker got a cancellation order for more than $100 million worth of military trucks. "That's all right with me," said Vance. "We don't want to make things that are not needed."

His final mobilization report, published three weeks ago, made so much sense that last week President Eisenhower asked Vance to take on the job of mobilization boss, once held by General Electric's Charlie Wilson. Vance turned it down, chiefly because there was no one ready to move into his job at Studebaker.

"I Am to Blame." Vance runs Studebaker's 25,000-man organization with no committees of any kind. Says he: "Committees call for compromise and compromise is not solution. I solve the company's problems with the men directly responsible for them. If anyone is at fault I am to blame." Vance's decision is final. Once, after he had threshed out a thorny production problem and decided on a course to follow, one executive was still not satisfied: "I don't want to argue with you, but--" Vance briskly cut him off: "Well then, don't."

Vance seldom writes a memo, does most of his business by phone, which he always answers himself. At Studebaker, even the lowliest production worker can dial 496 on a company phone and hear a polite voice at the other end: "Yes, sir. Mr. Vance speaking."

Vance is Studebaker for an excellent reason: he knows more about it than any other man alive. It was Vance, with his old friend and associate Paul Hoffman who saved the company during the Depression and thus added the most successful Chapter to a history that began in 1852.

"More Than You Promise." When they set up their village smithy and wagon-building shop in South Bend 101 years ago, brothers Clement and Henry Studebaker had just $68 to their name. But soon they and three other brothers were cashing in on the nation's great push westward making covered wagons for the pioneers and carts and carriages for the local trade. "Always give the customer more than you promise," was their motto, "but not too much, or you'll go broke." One of the company's first formal contracts was brief and to the point :

"I, Peter Studebaker, agree to sell all the wagons my brother Clem can make (Signed) Peter Studebaker."

"I agree to make all he can sell. (Signed) Clem Studebaker."

They landed Army contracts, and soon Studebaker wagons were rolling into battle at Gettysburg and other Civil War actions. Custer made his last stand on the Little Big Horn separated from his supply tram of Studebakers. In the Boer War, Correspondent Winston Churchill was captured with a Studebaker wagon. Orders poured in from all over the world, and by 1887 the company was touting itself as "The Biggest Vehicle House in the World," with annual sales of $2,000,000. Its most popular buggy was the high, wide & handsome "Izzer"--so called to distinguish it from a has-been, or a "Wuzzer." In 1910 Studebaker entered the auto business by buying control of Detroit's Everitt-Metzger-Flanders Co. Though Studebaker didn't know it, E-M-F's most valuable asset was in the person of a young man named Harold Vance, who started there that same year as a 15-c--an-hour mechanic's apprentice.

The Clerk Said No. The son of Samuel W. Vance, a Port Huron, Mich. circuit court judge, Harold Vance got through high school with average grades, went to work for his father's law partner after his father died. He tried for an appointment at West Point, but flunked the entrance exams and went to work for EMF.

He moved up fast because of his ability to grasp complicated situations, make calm, correct decisions and stick to them under pressure. Once, Studebaker's Treasurer Albert Russel Erskine wanted to install a new accounting system in EMF; Vance objected that it wouldn't work. He half expected to be fired. Instead, when Erskine became president, he made Vance assistant treasurer. Vance moved to South Bend in 1919, slowly worked up every rung of the Studebaker ladder. By the time depression struck, he was production vice president and a director, while Paul Hoffman, now president of the Ford Foundation, was vice president in charge of sales.

Too Early. Studebaker had almost weathered the crash when President Erskine made a fatal mistake. Recalled Hoffman: "Erskine figured that in 1931 the back of the Depression was broken, and that business would be on the upswing. So he started to expand in that year. Harold Vance went to Detroit to be president of our Rockne company and bring out the Rockne, which was our challenge to Ford. But Mr. Erskine was a year too early. He made the awful mistake of expanding in a dying market." Studebaker fell $21 million in debt, went into bankruptcy. President Erskine put a bullet through his heart, and Hoffman, Vance and Ashton Bean, head of Stude-baker-controlled White Motor Co., were made receivers of the company.

Working in adjoining offices seven days a week, 14 hours a day, Vance and Hoffman streamlined production, sales and distribution, ruthlessly cut costs. By 1935 they managed to float a $6,500,000 new stock and bond issue, unloaded White Motor Co. and pulled Studebaker out of receivership--the only time in history that a U.S. automaker has done so. Hoffman was made president, Vance chairman.

In the strike-torn '30s, the U.A.W. organized Studebaker without a work stoppage. Vance and Hoffman persuaded the union to retain the piecework pay system that had been a company policy for years. (Studebaker wages now are equal to or better than its rivals'--a potent factor in preserving the company's 101-year record without a strike.) With the track cleared, Vance and Hoffman were ready to step on the gas in search of new markets.

Bread & Butter. Designer Loewy was hired because, says Vance, "we felt that our own designers were paying too much attention to the production engineers, instead of letting themselves go."

Studebaker let itself go in 1939. It put out its lightweight Champion, which was so successful that sales nearly doubled (to $82 million) and a $1,700,000 loss the year before was turned into a $3,000,000 profit. When World War II came, the company was ready to take on $1.2 billion in war contracts, turning out 198,000 trucks, 64,000 engines for Flying Fortresses, and 16,000 amphibious Weasels. When Hoffman left to become ECA administrator, Vance became president as well as chairman.

Since 1947, Studebaker sales have jumped from $268 million to $550 million; profits rose from $9,000,000 to a peak of $27,500,000, before being nipped by the excess-profits tax. (In the first three quarters of 1952, hit by E.P.T. and the steel strike, net was $9,000,000.) Studebaker stock has risen from $18 to $41. Like everyone else, Studebaker has been pinched by metal allocations. When all controls are off and defense work diminishes, Vance expects to turn out 520,000 cars a year, 150% more than current production, and get 8% of all auto sales within the next five years.

Brawny & Graceful. Vance is sure that the oversize car is on the way out, and that car design may change fast in the next few years under the spur of hell-for-leather competition already in sight. Studebaker will have to hustle faster than ever to keep its designers ahead. Fiber glass and plastic bodies already promise great weight-savings and economies. Rear-engine autos, which would cut production costs, are another possibility. Last year Studebaker queried 10,000 people, found to its surprise that 50% of them would not hesitate to buy such a car.

Four decades ago, in an ad for a new car, Studebaker proudly boasted that it had achieved the ultimate in driving pleasure. The open, chariotlike Studebaker-Garford "Forty," it said, represented "the end of experiment." But Harold Vance, who has done plenty of experimenting in the intervening years, makes no such boast today. "Our new sports and family cars," says he, "represent the beginning of a whole new experiment in getting the fun back into driving."

*For those who don't agree, various independent companies put out kits with double downdraft carburetors, special manifolds, etc., to soup up Vance's eight-cylinder engine to 200 h.p.

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