The assembled-elsewhere boundary — sold and serviced here, built elsewhere

Boundary line from the dealership record

Lead: The verbs matter, and this article places them: automobiles on this ground were sold and serviced here at the strength the record gives, and built in South Bend, Detroit, and the other factory cities — never built here. In the earliest whole record, 1916–17, even selling is below directory strength: Polk gives New Carlisle a garage (Ray V. Evans) and an auto repairer (Orville E. Smith) and no automobile sales entry at all, while South Bend, thirteen miles east, held the works that made the county's cars — Studebaker electrics from 1902, gasoline cars from 1904, with gasoline production in Detroit in the early years and concentration in South Bend after 1920. A New Carlisle buyer in those years bought a car made somewhere else, from a trade that, in his own town, the directory could only yet prove would garage and repair it.

The later dealership record is owned by another leg of this build and is pointed to, not re-dug: the dealership test banked inside the businesses file establishes a selling presence in town in the automobile decades, itself gapped for the middle decades (GAP-NC3-DEALER-1). At whatever strength that record stands, it is a selling and servicing record. No dealership, garage, or repair entry in any period converts, by proximity to South Bend, into assembly: Studebaker's own history keeps design, manufacture, and assembly in South Bend (and, for a time, Detroit and Hamilton, Ontario) and assigns this ground exactly one industrial automobile function — testing, from 1926 — which the truck and supplier articles below take up at its true size. The corridor record on Michigan Street / U.S. 20 is likewise a selling-and-travel corridor record. Boundary line, printed once and plainly: built there; sold, garaged, repaired, fueled, and tested here.

Sources:

1. R. L. Polk & Co., Indiana Gazetteer and Business Directory for 1916–1917, New Carlisle entry — garage and auto repairer present, no automobile sales entry.
2. Studebaker National Museum history and Studebaker references: electric car 1902, gasoline cars 1904, Detroit production in the early motor years, production centered on South Bend after horse-drawn production ended in 1920; South Bend car production ended December 1963; last car, Hamilton, Ontario, March 1966.
3. Banked set, pointed not re-dug: dealership test inside the businesses file, gapped at GAP-NC3-DEALER-1 for the middle decades; corridor / street record banked at true size with the street file.