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Who Killed Studebaker? Conclusion
Sherwood EgbertWithout Sherwood Egbert at the ship's helm, the money-grubbing bean counters in the galley below could steer the ship into profitable waters by jettisoning the automotive division. They had been licking their chops to do just that when Sherwood arrived, and now they had their chance.

From a purely economic and business standpoint, they were justified: The stock rose in price when the announcement was made that automotive production was ending in South Bend.

I personally walked the shipping lots with cousin George Krem during the summer of 1963, marveling at all the cars they were building with a destination of simply "South Bend." We had walked those lots for years during our South Bend explorations in 1960-1964 and had never SEEN so many cars waiting to go somewhere… when, in fact, they had nowhere to go.

Ultimately, those cars had to go somewhere. So the Zone Reps offered them to the dealers below wholesale, just to get them out of South Bend. Of course, most of those cars were still in dealer inventories when the 1964 Studebakers were introduced. People attracted to the 1964 Studebakers would come in as potential 1964 model customers...but
many of them were offered such a fantastic deal on a left-over 1963 that they bought a left-over. Hence, the 1964 Studebaker line did not sell as well as Sherwood and company observers had hoped. It did attract customers, it did generate showroom traffic, but the traffic that bought, too often bought a left-over 1963 real cheap.

As many of you know, the country's commerce simply STOPPED when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. I was a Senior in high school, paying close attention to anything that related to Studebaker's well being. Studebaker was hanging on 10-day Sales Reports by a thread, as Kevin Wolford observed in his news group thread. For the ten days following Kennedy's assassination, there just weren't any sales to report, period. The bottom fell out. For Studebaker, it was especially deadly.

No sane person can deny the competition of the GM products that were heads-up against Studebaker for the 1964 model year. The Chevelle/Special/Tempest/F-85 lines were doggone good cars; attractive, well engineered with no goofy flex drive shafts with rear transmissions, aluminum engines, half-a-V-8 4-cylinder engines, or other such
malarkey. They were good looking and sized and priced right against the attractive new 1964 Studebakers.

Sadly, it was tough, tough competition for Studebaker.

Who knows, in retrospect, how many of those four factors Studebaker could have endured and thus survived longer in South Bend. We'll never know, but we do know our favorite marque couldn't survive all four….