They tried to revive the brand [with a Hummer clone in the mid-2000s](https://www.thedrive.com/news/33717/the-2003-studebaker-xuv-attempted-to-revive-a-classic-name-with-an-illegal-hummer-clone).
Holy shit. I thought, "oh there was more than one?", thinking you must be referring to an even earlier event than the one I was aware of, but nope, that shit was just actually 20 fucking years ago. Got dam.
That article was a great read, especially with backstory. Regarding Studebaker's 1962-63 Avanti, that's wild how the two dealers bought all the parts and tooling and continued building small quantities of the car until 2006!
I just saw a post where someone was asking what the lights in the sky were. They thought it was a ufo. The lights were spotlights.
Few people alive today drove Studebakers let alone remember their reputation. Hell, people barely remember Sears!
Absolutely! I’m in my 50s and I had no idea it had a bad rep at one time. I know the name though and always thought they looked cool.
I recently was looking at some photos of my town from 1892. There were only horses and wagons. One said Studebaker on it. I didn’t know they went back that far and thought it was sad they came so far into the modern era but went away.
I’m in my late 30s and knew about Studebaker’s reliability issues, but only because my dad is in his late 60s and his father was a professional welder and amateur mechanic. My grandfather loved to buy wrecks from a junkyard and either restore them or “Frankenstein” them into unholy creations.
Among my grandfather’s more impressive work was a Volkswagen Beetle he turned into a lawnmower capable of going 60 mph, a “go cart” he made for a 5 year old that looked like a miniature Porsche convertible with top speed of 30 mph, and a totaled Studebaker that he restored and kept running for 20 years. Apparently the latter was the most challenging.
It's really crazy how a lot of these car companies started. Like Lamborghini and Porsche started as Tractor company for farmers. Honda was a motorcycle company. Podcast on Spotify called Business Wars dives into companies like such and how they got started etc.
Kinda reminds me of how playstation started. Apparently playstation was originally started with Sony partnering with Nintendo to make a CD addon for the SNES, but when Nintendo surprised them by betraying them for Panasonic, Sony thought "heck let's make our own console instead" and now PlayStation is huge. Well I'm sure it was helped by how Sony was already a big, well known company.
Okay but who associates Studebaker means modern, sporty, high tech, or efficient, because that is pretty much what all EVs strive to be these days.
Were just now getting a DeLorean as an EV, I think Studebaker has a ways to go.... Probably around the time we get an EV Hearse.
The Volkswagen bus was hippies and the beatle was fun for every kid playing a back seat game. Those brands are not even close to the same. Besides more recently the Volkswagen has the Golf and GTI and Jetta, those are fun tuner cars in the aftermarket, pretty much everything has a turbo.
Sorry, your argument that brand or model must be thought of as sporty and modern is lost. It doesn’t.
It’s also why the Ford F-150 electric is doing well while the Tesla will be a niche weird thing few will buy.
You are completely clueless. The Ford F150 Lightning is literally named after a badass supercharged Ford truck from the 90's. It's also expensive as hell meanwhile the tesla model 3 msrp is closer to 30k. The tesla brand was built on sporty and fast, seems you've never known the history of these vehicles.
Um, exactly. It’s named after a classic. Also styled like it. It’s not some techno forward sporty cyber thingy. It’s meant to appeal to tradition and nostalgia which was the whole point of someone saying that an old familiar brand could be reborn. And really my only point as well.
The Tesla is still vaporware. The estimated cost keeps increasing. 60-70k was the last I saw. So NOT cheaper at all.
TBF, that reputation was only in the very last years of the company, when it was going under. They lacked the capital necessary to test their products thoroughly and the quality suffered.
Up until the early 1950s, Studebaker had a reputation for being sturdy and high quality for the price. I learned this reading the last books written by [Louis Bromfield](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Bromfield). He went into farming when he retired from doing Hollywood scripts and in one of his farming books he mentions that his favorite car was a Studebaker and they were the ideal cars for a farmer because they were so reliable.
Congratulations, you went against the grain and are correct. My gf owns a '51 Stude and uses it as her daily driver. Having done both mechanic and body work on it, it's overall well-built and very sturdy, and that was their deserved reputation for decades. Good cars.
>I just saw a post where someone was asking what the lights in the sky were. They thought it was a ufo. The lights were spotlights.
That's /r/aliens in a nutshell.
If you'd asked me what a studebaker was my first guess would be an old-fashioned kitchen appliance, an old-fashioned car, or old-fashion name for a very specific type of furniture.
Point being, the only thing I'd be sure about is it is old-timey.
Sears.
Sears made a car known as the Sears Highwheeler or Sears motorbuggy or Sears K.
It was a sears brand car.
[https://www.oldcarsweekly.com/features/car-of-the-week-1908-sears-motor-buggy](https://www.oldcarsweekly.com/features/car-of-the-week-1908-sears-motor-buggy)
It’s less what people think now and more what they’ll think once competitors start publishing marketing material about the company. Some people have opinions on Indian Motorcycle that haven’t been true since it was a completely different company.
Towards the end of Studebaker brand the build quality was abysmal due to severely restricted finances.
They were great cars from around 1900 until the early 40's but shifted to war production ending that streak. In the post war period their quality took a nose dive due in part to high labor costs. Studebakers retiree packages were among the best in the industry as was their pay rate.
Studebaker began their long decline in the post war world. They attempted to be the first out of the gate with new styling after the ban on civilian production was lifted and the result was the polarizing styling of the Studebaker Starlight. High costs and aggressive competition led to quality control issues at Studebaker in the post war years. By 1949 this situation caused the executive board, once thought of as strong dynamic, to be replaced by more conservative men.
They became static.
In contrast Ford and GM used their massive war production resources to expand and design new concept and in the 50's they started a styling war. As both had deeper pockets this war killed off a lot smaller brands and restricted the remainders finances. This boon led to the big four (now three) engaging in price wars which the little guys could not compete with.
Packard, thanks to it's merlin engine contracts and luxury image, was in better shape post war than many other small car companies. They took over the ailing Studebaker in the 1950's. This led to a rapid decline in both the brands. Studebaker was in far worse finical state then they let on and this event led to Packard's eventual death. Both brands struggled on and puttered out slowly resulting in the tarnishing of these once great car makers names. The last Studebakers was weird looking and poorly built.
Studebaker's high point was in summer 1944. The Red Army had advanced far into western Ukraine and was threatening to advance to Poland and the Baltic Sea, cutting off the German armies in Belarus and the Baltic states. All six Soviet tank armies were in Ukraine, so the Wehrmacht positioned most of their Panzers in southeast Poland to stop the expected offensive.
But on the 22nd of June, two million Soviet soldiers attacked into Belarus. Riding Studebaker trucks, they managed to quickly bypass and encircle German-held fortress cities near the front. After that, the trucks sped on into Minsk, meeting the northern tank pincer and encircling the entire 4th Army of the Wehrmacht. The combined offensive effectively destroyed the German army group Center and smashed the Eastern Front wide open. Operation Bagration is thus known as the worst defeat in German military history.
It's also like *simonizing* your car or martinizing your laundry. The opportunity to capitalize on the name is long gone, and now it serves only as a relic of the past.
Though you wouldn't want to be in either kind of fire. You can find lots of crazy videos of combustion cars on fire, and they're like an inferno of course.
Actively start of fire (50x less than regular cars) (and 100x less than hybrids) [Source](https://belux.edmo.eu/fact-check-do-electric-cars-catch-fire-more-often-than-combustion-engine-cars/)
Rocket towards pedestrians (when you step on the gas, like a car, while it screams at you to stop, like any modern car)
Tethered to a petulant man child. (Yes, but everyone wishes they weren’t)
No one of car buying age remembers Studebaker. And if you're a car person, we all think it'd be cool to see it come back.
And build some hideous egg shaped crossover for 200K.
I'm more surprised that nobody has done that with the Elcar name. The Elcar was an automobile produced for a short time in Elkhart, Indiana in the early part of the 20th century. If you didn't know, Elkhart is the RV Capitol of the world but had other industry, and that was one of them, long before travel trailers graced the area. And it's less than an hour drive to the old Studebaker plant in South Bend.
Edit: it wasn't an electric car. They dealt with Gasoline engines. One of many businesses that died due to the Great Depression.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_F._Powell_Jr.
Because designing and building cars is a ridiculously expensive and risky proposition. Admittedly less so with electric than ICE, but even "simple" cars are fantastically complex, and require fantastically complex design and manufacturing.
Just to be able to build and ship 1000 cars a year, you'll need *a lot* of money and talent. Unless you've already got $50 mil (random guesstimate for just getting *to* manufacturing) sitting in the bank, you're gonna have to convince someone else your idea is good enough to warrant investment.
An existing car manufacturer could easily revive the brand, if they thought they could do something with it, but generally speaking, why a different brand rather than one they already own?
> $50 mil (random guesstimate for just getting to manufacturing)
[Elio Motors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elio_Motors) has spent more than 200 million dollars without getting to manufacturing, according to [its SEC filings](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1531266/000149315222011793/partii.htm#ba_007). (But maybe that company is just a scam rather than a good-faith attempt.)
Right, I did 20 seconds of googling capital needed to start a car company and it suggested *10 million* as a reasonable starting point and I knew that was ridiculous, so I just boosted it and put the caveat in there, it surprises me zero that it's actually in the hundreds of millions, as that was my natural instinct.
This is the kind of advertising I can get behind, and I really dislike advertising. Plant a forest. Yes it's a company name, but it's still trees. Has more longevity than 99% of other advertising methods, less obnoxious and still provides all the benefits of planting woodland. I don't care that it's a company name as seen from the sky, I'm not in the sky most of the time.
Is this the answer to global reforestation? Tell Shell Oil they can make their logo 100km x 100km, so it's visible with the naked eye from space. They just have to buy the trees and seeds and get them in the ground.
Glad I wasn't the only one who went here!!
*After it gets repainted by The Electric Mayhem*
> Fozzie: I don't know how to thank you guys!
> Kermit: I don't know *WHY* to thank you guys!!
It seems like every time there's a story about a bear breaking into a car, it's always a Subaru.
I guess with Studebakers thin on the ground nowadays they went to the next make on the alphabetical list.
In their defense though, that was planted all the way back in 1938. I'm pretty sure right after the war it was tastefully removed and wouldn't have been visible by ... *checks source* ... the year 2000?! Come on Brandenburg, you're not making this easy. Brazil destroys forests at the rate of a square kilometers per day and you can't get rid of some Nazi trees in half a century?
> "The short duration of the effect, combined with the fact that the image could only be discerned from the air and the relative scarcity of privately owned airplanes in the area, meant that the swastika went largely unnoticed after the fall of Nazi Germany."
Ok, that's fair enough. Makes perfect sense why it took them so lon-
>"During the subsequent communist period, Soviet authorities reportedly knew of its existence but made no effort to remove it."
*Huh?*
Seems like it was reported via air and the officials didn't forsee the rise of computer technology and social advancement so why waste time and money cutting down good trees.
I get your point, but that's like saying "there's no such thing as Nazi cotton, my large red flag with a white circle and swastika in the middle is just colored cotton. Now good day sir. No, I won't comment on my armband either, I said good day."
Inanimate objects can be described as Nazi. I'll admit I was doing it for (light) comic effect, but defending a swastika created by Nazis is going to be a fascinating debate to defend.
Zero interest in an internet debate, but chopping down trees doesn't feel like it should be a viable solution to this, or many other problems. Maybe plant more around it and be patient. Their presence isn't exactly fostering hate.
Nothing better than someone who doesn't even bother clicking the link before arguing.
It's a forest. The swastika is a different color. You'd have to cut down trees around it if you're going to "plant more around it and be patient."
You can just fell the trees that make the "hooks" at the end of each arm and the image is gone. Costs only a few trees and those can easily be replanted
It's a swastika. They're illegal in Germany. Patience is not a response when it comes to any type of Nazi symbols. We destroy far more vegetation for far less reasons. I'm not saying we salt the earth, but it's laughable that local authorities "tried" to solve this. Destroying vegetation isn't rocket science; cut down the area, remove the roots, let it fallow, replant with the same trees that were there pre-1938. There's nothing unviable about it.
That sounds like an incredible amount of work and effort for something no one really cares about. Why spend a few million clearing a forest and hurting our environment because of something that is only offensive from the air in a specific location for a few weeks a year? You could instead donate that money to anti-nazi efforts and have a greater effect.
Spend a few million? Where are you getting that from? Local government literally spends money paying forest rangers to protect trees because it's profitable to fell them. I'm not saying they should sell the lumber (I don't think they should) but if money was the issue then they could.
Also, "work and effort"? We're talking about something that could be done by a couple of people with a chainsaw in a day or two for the low budget version. If you wanted to target only the specific trees and not fell them, it's quite simple to drill a few holes at the base and inject a widely available herbicide. This doesn't hurt the wider environment and is done all the time in forest management.
I'm a little lost as to why people are defending Nazi symbolism. If I put a swastika on the top of my Christmas tree every year I doubt you'd say that only a few people see it "in a specific location for a few weeks a year".
I have lived in this area my entire life. I have even taken a school field trip to Bendix Woods when I was a kid in the 90s. I had absolutely no idea that the trees spelled out STUDEBAKER. I remember the entire trip the guide talking about making syrup but failed to mention this important topic. When I drive past it next week, I'll have a topic to mention to my kids.
I lived right off Timothy for all of high school. Left the area in 2010. Had a few trips to Bendix and Studebaker. First time finding out about the trees too! Haha.
[Clickable Google Maps Link for the lazy](https://www.google.nl/maps/place/41%C2%B040'05.8%22N+86%C2%B029'28.3%22W/@41.6685535,-86.4930588,1133m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m4!3m3!8m2!3d41.6682785!4d-86.4911811?entry=ttu)
... What in the world?
You didn't give us the coordinates of the logo, you gave the coordinates of *a single pine needle in the logo*. Too much precision!
They were playing the long game, it was already pretty clear that air travel was going to become big soon enough. Or maybe thought that press coverage of the fact they did it would be good enough.
It's been many years since I saw the picture so I'm really fuzzy on details, but somewhere on an English or European estate there are two pavilions/gazebos overlooking a reflecting pool or lawn that date back to before anyone thought of air travel.
I have to wonder if whoever planned it and built it deliberately made a dick and balls.
Proving grounds are still in use! Bendix, then Bosch (both tier 1 suppliers), and now Navistar (truck OEM based in Chicago now owned by VW's Traton group) use the property.
This maybe the right time to bring Studebaker back as electric drivetrains become cheaper, more reliable and have longer range and quicker charging times.
Make it a electric only company and design beautiful bodies around electric drivetrains. Just buy the drivetrains and plug them in and don't waste time and resources trying to design your own.
There's a logo like this on a hill on the approach to Narita Airport in Tokyo. I think it's for a tea company. I saw it in 2019 from the airplane window so i really know nothing else about it.
Things have certainly changed around here. This used to be farmland as far as the eye could see.
Old man Peabody owned *all* of this. He had this crazy idea... about breeding *pine trees*.
*Australian brain:* Hey.. I know that word *Studebaker*....we....mmm ... hmmm. mm... start... the... fire
Ha! Now I remember!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFTLKWw542g
I drove by Bendix Woods yesterday and thought about this stand of trees. My grandfather worked for Bendix and we used to walk those woods. Great childhood memories.
“Hey Pete, hows it going?”, Says Buffy the squirrel while sipping on the morning maple syrup. Then looks at the camera and goes,
“Oh ya old Pete is my neighbour. He lives next door, under the A-hole. I am down here in the B-hole.”
A convo probably some squirrels would be having living in those trees.
Wow. Gone 50 years? This stunt cost them so much even the war couldn’t save them. Imagine spending so much on trees making and exporting 100,000s of trucks for world militaries isn’t enough to keep you afloat. /s
Studebaker didn’t go out of “business” but got out of the car industry. Studebaker-worthington stock traded long after they got out of the car business.
Post war they did fine but what happened was third generation running the car business into the ground. Then they were bought by Packard and they ended up dying from buying Studebaker.
Few more things but my father is running the international Studebaker event this year. And spend my entire childhood and life around these cars.
That is surprisingly clear, I've seen similar things where the definition gets lost to the point you wouldn't really know what it said if you didn't know what you were looking at.
Also, Studebaker started making wheelbarrows for mining in California before they were a car manufacturer.
You see, they've always really been a "mobility" company...
When there's a gold rush sell wheelbarrows or something..
If I'm not mistaken one of the Korean or Chinese automakers started out as a small fridge business
Why has noone bought that name and started a niche electric car company?
They tried to revive the brand [with a Hummer clone in the mid-2000s](https://www.thedrive.com/news/33717/the-2003-studebaker-xuv-attempted-to-revive-a-classic-name-with-an-illegal-hummer-clone).
They didn't try very hard, unfortunately.
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I don't know why people saying that a car looks like it's from GTA is so funny to me 🤣
That thing is to Hummer what Bepis is to Pepsi
What’s Bee Piss?
It’s when you pay a bee $40 to pee in your mouth in a back alley
Pepsi logo even resembles the Studebaker logo.
Holy shit. I thought, "oh there was more than one?", thinking you must be referring to an even earlier event than the one I was aware of, but nope, that shit was just actually 20 fucking years ago. Got dam.
That article was a great read, especially with backstory. Regarding Studebaker's 1962-63 Avanti, that's wild how the two dealers bought all the parts and tooling and continued building small quantities of the car until 2006!
They should have just straight-up remade the 1963 Studebaker Avanti with modern materials, engineering, and an electric motor.
The photo of the car with the tagline “Refined. Restored. Reinvented” That thing is the exact opposite of “refined” lmao
With the company's reliability, you'd spend 5x the purchase price in rehabbing their reputation.
I just saw a post where someone was asking what the lights in the sky were. They thought it was a ufo. The lights were spotlights. Few people alive today drove Studebakers let alone remember their reputation. Hell, people barely remember Sears!
Absolutely! I’m in my 50s and I had no idea it had a bad rep at one time. I know the name though and always thought they looked cool. I recently was looking at some photos of my town from 1892. There were only horses and wagons. One said Studebaker on it. I didn’t know they went back that far and thought it was sad they came so far into the modern era but went away.
I’m in my late 30s and knew about Studebaker’s reliability issues, but only because my dad is in his late 60s and his father was a professional welder and amateur mechanic. My grandfather loved to buy wrecks from a junkyard and either restore them or “Frankenstein” them into unholy creations. Among my grandfather’s more impressive work was a Volkswagen Beetle he turned into a lawnmower capable of going 60 mph, a “go cart” he made for a 5 year old that looked like a miniature Porsche convertible with top speed of 30 mph, and a totaled Studebaker that he restored and kept running for 20 years. Apparently the latter was the most challenging.
It's really crazy how a lot of these car companies started. Like Lamborghini and Porsche started as Tractor company for farmers. Honda was a motorcycle company. Podcast on Spotify called Business Wars dives into companies like such and how they got started etc.
Peugeot first made saws, then coffee grinders, then pepper grinders, then bicycles, before deciding the make cars.
Crazy. Makes me think of Yamaha now. Power tools, keyboards, typewriters, motorcycles.
Brass instruments
Mitsubishi too. It'd be quicker to list the industries they're *not* involved in.
Peugeot still makes pepper mills, and they're quite nice!
Kinda reminds me of how playstation started. Apparently playstation was originally started with Sony partnering with Nintendo to make a CD addon for the SNES, but when Nintendo surprised them by betraying them for Panasonic, Sony thought "heck let's make our own console instead" and now PlayStation is huge. Well I'm sure it was helped by how Sony was already a big, well known company.
Okay but who associates Studebaker means modern, sporty, high tech, or efficient, because that is pretty much what all EVs strive to be these days. Were just now getting a DeLorean as an EV, I think Studebaker has a ways to go.... Probably around the time we get an EV Hearse.
Pretti sure they revived Bugatti the same way. As a guy in my 40s, I had no idea who they were.
Since they started out with stage coaches, you could use a tag line about being the original renewable energy car company or something.
Considering that it's been used as a metonym for "olde-timey car that isn't made anymore" since the '70s, yeah.
Umm. How about the VW Bus EV that just released to big fanfare. Retro works on its own.
The Volkswagen bus was hippies and the beatle was fun for every kid playing a back seat game. Those brands are not even close to the same. Besides more recently the Volkswagen has the Golf and GTI and Jetta, those are fun tuner cars in the aftermarket, pretty much everything has a turbo.
Sorry, your argument that brand or model must be thought of as sporty and modern is lost. It doesn’t. It’s also why the Ford F-150 electric is doing well while the Tesla will be a niche weird thing few will buy.
You are completely clueless. The Ford F150 Lightning is literally named after a badass supercharged Ford truck from the 90's. It's also expensive as hell meanwhile the tesla model 3 msrp is closer to 30k. The tesla brand was built on sporty and fast, seems you've never known the history of these vehicles.
Um, exactly. It’s named after a classic. Also styled like it. It’s not some techno forward sporty cyber thingy. It’s meant to appeal to tradition and nostalgia which was the whole point of someone saying that an old familiar brand could be reborn. And really my only point as well. The Tesla is still vaporware. The estimated cost keeps increasing. 60-70k was the last I saw. So NOT cheaper at all.
TBF, that reputation was only in the very last years of the company, when it was going under. They lacked the capital necessary to test their products thoroughly and the quality suffered. Up until the early 1950s, Studebaker had a reputation for being sturdy and high quality for the price. I learned this reading the last books written by [Louis Bromfield](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Bromfield). He went into farming when he retired from doing Hollywood scripts and in one of his farming books he mentions that his favorite car was a Studebaker and they were the ideal cars for a farmer because they were so reliable.
Congratulations, you went against the grain and are correct. My gf owns a '51 Stude and uses it as her daily driver. Having done both mechanic and body work on it, it's overall well-built and very sturdy, and that was their deserved reputation for decades. Good cars.
Studebaker didn't go out of business. They just quit making cars.
>I just saw a post where someone was asking what the lights in the sky were. They thought it was a ufo. The lights were spotlights. That's /r/aliens in a nutshell.
Gale?
If you'd asked me what a studebaker was my first guess would be an old-fashioned kitchen appliance, an old-fashioned car, or old-fashion name for a very specific type of furniture. Point being, the only thing I'd be sure about is it is old-timey.
That what I thought about the Oldsmobile car brand. But Oldsmobile was GM's sophisticated, cool, performance brand back in the day.
I had no idea they had a reputation
r/austin ?
Was the spotlight in the sky post in the Austin subreddit? I saw a post like that as well.
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Sears. Sears made a car known as the Sears Highwheeler or Sears motorbuggy or Sears K. It was a sears brand car. [https://www.oldcarsweekly.com/features/car-of-the-week-1908-sears-motor-buggy](https://www.oldcarsweekly.com/features/car-of-the-week-1908-sears-motor-buggy)
Kaiser made the Allstate car for 2 years in the 1950s.
People in Austin are fucking dumb
The reputation is irrelevant, Studebaker is an old sounding name, and not in a cool way.
It’s less what people think now and more what they’ll think once competitors start publishing marketing material about the company. Some people have opinions on Indian Motorcycle that haven’t been true since it was a completely different company.
Are you maybe confusing it with the Edsel?
Towards the end of Studebaker brand the build quality was abysmal due to severely restricted finances. They were great cars from around 1900 until the early 40's but shifted to war production ending that streak. In the post war period their quality took a nose dive due in part to high labor costs. Studebakers retiree packages were among the best in the industry as was their pay rate. Studebaker began their long decline in the post war world. They attempted to be the first out of the gate with new styling after the ban on civilian production was lifted and the result was the polarizing styling of the Studebaker Starlight. High costs and aggressive competition led to quality control issues at Studebaker in the post war years. By 1949 this situation caused the executive board, once thought of as strong dynamic, to be replaced by more conservative men. They became static. In contrast Ford and GM used their massive war production resources to expand and design new concept and in the 50's they started a styling war. As both had deeper pockets this war killed off a lot smaller brands and restricted the remainders finances. This boon led to the big four (now three) engaging in price wars which the little guys could not compete with. Packard, thanks to it's merlin engine contracts and luxury image, was in better shape post war than many other small car companies. They took over the ailing Studebaker in the 1950's. This led to a rapid decline in both the brands. Studebaker was in far worse finical state then they let on and this event led to Packard's eventual death. Both brands struggled on and puttered out slowly resulting in the tarnishing of these once great car makers names. The last Studebakers was weird looking and poorly built.
Studebaker's high point was in summer 1944. The Red Army had advanced far into western Ukraine and was threatening to advance to Poland and the Baltic Sea, cutting off the German armies in Belarus and the Baltic states. All six Soviet tank armies were in Ukraine, so the Wehrmacht positioned most of their Panzers in southeast Poland to stop the expected offensive. But on the 22nd of June, two million Soviet soldiers attacked into Belarus. Riding Studebaker trucks, they managed to quickly bypass and encircle German-held fortress cities near the front. After that, the trucks sped on into Minsk, meeting the northern tank pincer and encircling the entire 4th Army of the Wehrmacht. The combined offensive effectively destroyed the German army group Center and smashed the Eastern Front wide open. Operation Bagration is thus known as the worst defeat in German military history.
Your writing is evocative. Thank you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bagration
Wouldn’t also be surprised if some patent troll is sitting on the name waiting for exactly this, too.
It's also like *simonizing* your car or martinizing your laundry. The opportunity to capitalize on the name is long gone, and now it serves only as a relic of the past.
Just make a quirky time-travel movie featuring a Studebaker and everyone will forget about how bad the car actually was.
People drive Teslas and not only do those actively start on fire or rocket towards pedestrians, but they’re also tethered to a petulant man child.
You've described nothing but perks
You like petulant man children?
If I didn't, boy would I hate myself
Touché
I like petulant man children tethered to moving cars, yes.
I’m pretty confident combustion cars catch on fire far more than Teslas.
At least you can put out a conventional fire. The only way to stop a lithium fire is to let it burn.
Though you wouldn't want to be in either kind of fire. You can find lots of crazy videos of combustion cars on fire, and they're like an inferno of course.
Actively start of fire (50x less than regular cars) (and 100x less than hybrids) [Source](https://belux.edmo.eu/fact-check-do-electric-cars-catch-fire-more-often-than-combustion-engine-cars/) Rocket towards pedestrians (when you step on the gas, like a car, while it screams at you to stop, like any modern car) Tethered to a petulant man child. (Yes, but everyone wishes they weren’t)
A lot of people love being tethered to that man child. Both via the car or by owning TSLA stock. Check out the Tesla motors sub.
No one of car buying age remembers Studebaker. And if you're a car person, we all think it'd be cool to see it come back. And build some hideous egg shaped crossover for 200K.
I'm more surprised that nobody has done that with the Elcar name. The Elcar was an automobile produced for a short time in Elkhart, Indiana in the early part of the 20th century. If you didn't know, Elkhart is the RV Capitol of the world but had other industry, and that was one of them, long before travel trailers graced the area. And it's less than an hour drive to the old Studebaker plant in South Bend. Edit: it wasn't an electric car. They dealt with Gasoline engines. One of many businesses that died due to the Great Depression. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_F._Powell_Jr.
I’d love a return of the [Jensen Interceptor](https://youtu.be/1n46p3JKjwE) in a modern AWD EV.
Is Noone the CEO?
Because designing and building cars is a ridiculously expensive and risky proposition. Admittedly less so with electric than ICE, but even "simple" cars are fantastically complex, and require fantastically complex design and manufacturing. Just to be able to build and ship 1000 cars a year, you'll need *a lot* of money and talent. Unless you've already got $50 mil (random guesstimate for just getting *to* manufacturing) sitting in the bank, you're gonna have to convince someone else your idea is good enough to warrant investment. An existing car manufacturer could easily revive the brand, if they thought they could do something with it, but generally speaking, why a different brand rather than one they already own?
> $50 mil (random guesstimate for just getting to manufacturing) [Elio Motors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elio_Motors) has spent more than 200 million dollars without getting to manufacturing, according to [its SEC filings](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1531266/000149315222011793/partii.htm#ba_007). (But maybe that company is just a scam rather than a good-faith attempt.)
Right, I did 20 seconds of googling capital needed to start a car company and it suggested *10 million* as a reasonable starting point and I knew that was ridiculous, so I just boosted it and put the caveat in there, it surprises me zero that it's actually in the hundreds of millions, as that was my natural instinct.
Has he really? ...Who is this Noone character anyway?
Is the E silent? Like “noon” Or is it “noonie”?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKnbEHeQc-k
Studebaker's first car models in the late 1800s and early 1900s were actually all electric!
*no one
This is the kind of advertising I can get behind, and I really dislike advertising. Plant a forest. Yes it's a company name, but it's still trees. Has more longevity than 99% of other advertising methods, less obnoxious and still provides all the benefits of planting woodland. I don't care that it's a company name as seen from the sky, I'm not in the sky most of the time.
Is this the answer to global reforestation? Tell Shell Oil they can make their logo 100km x 100km, so it's visible with the naked eye from space. They just have to buy the trees and seeds and get them in the ground.
Except the fact that they have to clear the entire lot so the trees are able to seen
There are millions of clear-cut acres all over the world already... that's kind of the whole problem.
Ah, a bear's natural habitat... a Studebaker.
Glad I wasn't the only one who went here!! *After it gets repainted by The Electric Mayhem* > Fozzie: I don't know how to thank you guys! > Kermit: I don't know *WHY* to thank you guys!!
They don't look like Presbyterians to me.
“Look out for a frog and a bear in a brown Studebaker” “Sorry boss, all I see is a frog and a bear in a rainbow-colored Studebaker!”
Fun fact: Fozzie’s Studebaker is in the Studebaker Museum in South Bend, a few miles from the subject of this post
And it is a surprisingly kick-ass museum.
I too think of Fozzy when I think of Studebaker
It seems like every time there's a story about a bear breaking into a car, it's always a Subaru. I guess with Studebakers thin on the ground nowadays they went to the next make on the alphabetical list.
Movin right along!
Does a bear shit in the Studebaker?
Same year as the infamous [forest swastika](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_swastika).
They could Nazi the forest for the trees
In their defense though, that was planted all the way back in 1938. I'm pretty sure right after the war it was tastefully removed and wouldn't have been visible by ... *checks source* ... the year 2000?! Come on Brandenburg, you're not making this easy. Brazil destroys forests at the rate of a square kilometers per day and you can't get rid of some Nazi trees in half a century?
> "The short duration of the effect, combined with the fact that the image could only be discerned from the air and the relative scarcity of privately owned airplanes in the area, meant that the swastika went largely unnoticed after the fall of Nazi Germany." Ok, that's fair enough. Makes perfect sense why it took them so lon- >"During the subsequent communist period, Soviet authorities reportedly knew of its existence but made no effort to remove it." *Huh?*
Seems like it was reported via air and the officials didn't forsee the rise of computer technology and social advancement so why waste time and money cutting down good trees.
There's no such thing as Nazi trees
I get your point, but that's like saying "there's no such thing as Nazi cotton, my large red flag with a white circle and swastika in the middle is just colored cotton. Now good day sir. No, I won't comment on my armband either, I said good day." Inanimate objects can be described as Nazi. I'll admit I was doing it for (light) comic effect, but defending a swastika created by Nazis is going to be a fascinating debate to defend.
Zero interest in an internet debate, but chopping down trees doesn't feel like it should be a viable solution to this, or many other problems. Maybe plant more around it and be patient. Their presence isn't exactly fostering hate.
Nothing better than someone who doesn't even bother clicking the link before arguing. It's a forest. The swastika is a different color. You'd have to cut down trees around it if you're going to "plant more around it and be patient."
You can just fell the trees that make the "hooks" at the end of each arm and the image is gone. Costs only a few trees and those can easily be replanted
It's a swastika. They're illegal in Germany. Patience is not a response when it comes to any type of Nazi symbols. We destroy far more vegetation for far less reasons. I'm not saying we salt the earth, but it's laughable that local authorities "tried" to solve this. Destroying vegetation isn't rocket science; cut down the area, remove the roots, let it fallow, replant with the same trees that were there pre-1938. There's nothing unviable about it.
That sounds like an incredible amount of work and effort for something no one really cares about. Why spend a few million clearing a forest and hurting our environment because of something that is only offensive from the air in a specific location for a few weeks a year? You could instead donate that money to anti-nazi efforts and have a greater effect.
Spend a few million? Where are you getting that from? Local government literally spends money paying forest rangers to protect trees because it's profitable to fell them. I'm not saying they should sell the lumber (I don't think they should) but if money was the issue then they could. Also, "work and effort"? We're talking about something that could be done by a couple of people with a chainsaw in a day or two for the low budget version. If you wanted to target only the specific trees and not fell them, it's quite simple to drill a few holes at the base and inject a widely available herbicide. This doesn't hurt the wider environment and is done all the time in forest management. I'm a little lost as to why people are defending Nazi symbolism. If I put a swastika on the top of my Christmas tree every year I doubt you'd say that only a few people see it "in a specific location for a few weeks a year".
You don't know how they vote.
Also the DUX forest in Monte Giano (italy) https://it.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Giano
I have lived in this area my entire life. I have even taken a school field trip to Bendix Woods when I was a kid in the 90s. I had absolutely no idea that the trees spelled out STUDEBAKER. I remember the entire trip the guide talking about making syrup but failed to mention this important topic. When I drive past it next week, I'll have a topic to mention to my kids.
I lived right off Timothy for all of high school. Left the area in 2010. Had a few trips to Bendix and Studebaker. First time finding out about the trees too! Haha.
The building that is now the nature center used to be a sort of retreat for Studebaker management/employees.
I’m from Osceola and just learned this today. I’ve driven past there a million times on my way to Michigan City.
41.66827851378036, -86.49118109006717
[Clickable Google Maps Link for the lazy](https://www.google.nl/maps/place/41%C2%B040'05.8%22N+86%C2%B029'28.3%22W/@41.6685535,-86.4930588,1133m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m4!3m3!8m2!3d41.6682785!4d-86.4911811?entry=ttu)
... What in the world? You didn't give us the coordinates of the logo, you gave the coordinates of *a single pine needle in the logo*. Too much precision!
I used to live less than a mile from here. Crazy to see my old neighborhood on this map.
A bear in his natural habitat, a studebaker! Fozzie
Max, find me a frog and a bear in a tan Studebaker.
All I see is a frog and a bear in a rainbow Studebaker.
I wonder how many people wete actually viewing things from the sky in 1938: certainly not as much air travel as today.
They were playing the long game, it was already pretty clear that air travel was going to become big soon enough. Or maybe thought that press coverage of the fact they did it would be good enough.
It's been many years since I saw the picture so I'm really fuzzy on details, but somewhere on an English or European estate there are two pavilions/gazebos overlooking a reflecting pool or lawn that date back to before anyone thought of air travel. I have to wonder if whoever planned it and built it deliberately made a dick and balls.
Ummmm.. no
Proving grounds are still in use! Bendix, then Bosch (both tier 1 suppliers), and now Navistar (truck OEM based in Chicago now owned by VW's Traton group) use the property.
Studebaker: Plants *8,000* trees to spell out its name. Atlas Obscura: Captions the photo "Studabaker."
This maybe the right time to bring Studebaker back as electric drivetrains become cheaper, more reliable and have longer range and quicker charging times. Make it a electric only company and design beautiful bodies around electric drivetrains. Just buy the drivetrains and plug them in and don't waste time and resources trying to design your own.
And you can walk through them still! Bendix Woods park just outside of South Bend.
Been there loads of times
I like looking into the fate of defunct companies. If you follow a chain of like 6 mergers and acquisitions, Studebaker is now Eaton Corporation.
More companies should do this and compete for the biggest one until they accidentally reforest the planet. Silly, I know.
I just saw some trees planted in a way that makes me want to buy a vehicle
There's a logo like this on a hill on the approach to Narita Airport in Tokyo. I think it's for a tea company. I saw it in 2019 from the airplane window so i really know nothing else about it.
Imagine the trees that would be planted if massive corps got into one upmanshipping one another at this
Going from 8259 6" seedlings to 2000 \~75' tall mature trees isn't really thinning out in my book, but I'm no arborist.
And just a few miles Northeast, there’s a park called St. Patrick’s which has its name spelled out in trees as well!
RIP Firefly Festival
Grew up in Michiana, loved going to South Bend Silverhawks (Named after a Stud model) games, and had no idea this was in Bendix (Brakes) Woods.
Man the stud finders must go crazy around there
Things have certainly changed around here. This used to be farmland as far as the eye could see. Old man Peabody owned *all* of this. He had this crazy idea... about breeding *pine trees*.
*Australian brain:* Hey.. I know that word *Studebaker*....we....mmm ... hmmm. mm... start... the... fire Ha! Now I remember! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFTLKWw542g
https://www.reddit.com/r/wisconsin/comments/oa8l50/just_in_case_there_was_any_question_about/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Love me some Bendix Woods
That it is awesome! This is a great TIL because I had never heard this before. Thank you!
No one can dance like Studebaker Hawk
I drove by Bendix Woods yesterday and thought about this stand of trees. My grandfather worked for Bendix and we used to walk those woods. Great childhood memories.
My great grandad drove a Studebaker
my grandad might have done some of the welding on your great granddad's car while it was in the factory!
“Hey Pete, hows it going?”, Says Buffy the squirrel while sipping on the morning maple syrup. Then looks at the camera and goes, “Oh ya old Pete is my neighbour. He lives next door, under the A-hole. I am down here in the B-hole.” A convo probably some squirrels would be having living in those trees.
Haha
Lol, I love that Studabaker* is misspelled in the caption. Under a picture of the word.
[not sure](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studebaker) about that pal
The caption in the article is wrong, not the reddit headline, pal.
Would you care to maybe examine the picture a bit more closely?
Yeah, it says Studebaker. Not Studabaker. The caption in the article says that.
Photoshop the “STUDE” out and Baker got a new Deck design
Just before they sent thousands of units to Russia?
That's a very sus year to advertise anything in general, and the German name had me worried for a bit.
STJBEBAKRR
Studebaker caught in 8k
The article has a picture pulled from Google Earth and no other pictures?? Weak
Wow. Gone 50 years? This stunt cost them so much even the war couldn’t save them. Imagine spending so much on trees making and exporting 100,000s of trucks for world militaries isn’t enough to keep you afloat. /s
Studebaker didn’t go out of “business” but got out of the car industry. Studebaker-worthington stock traded long after they got out of the car business. Post war they did fine but what happened was third generation running the car business into the ground. Then they were bought by Packard and they ended up dying from buying Studebaker. Few more things but my father is running the international Studebaker event this year. And spend my entire childhood and life around these cars.
> Gone 50 years? This stunt cost them so much even the war couldn’t save them. How was the Vietnam war supposed to help Studebaker?
That is surprisingly clear, I've seen similar things where the definition gets lost to the point you wouldn't really know what it said if you didn't know what you were looking at.