The Name in Other Cities — What Was Not Made Here

Boundary pointer · Bendix products · Studebaker automobiles

Lead: Two famous names are attached to this ground, and neither name's products were made on it. This pointer exists so the names are never mistaken for manufacture here.

Studebaker automobiles were made in South Bend, Indiana — wagons from 1852, automobiles in the converted South Bend wagon works (fully converted by 1920), in the manufacturing complex the National Register nomination describes alongside, and distinct from, the proving ground. The New Carlisle ground tested Studebaker cars; it assembled none. Bendix brakes, starter drives, carburetors, aircraft hydraulics, radios, phonographs, and avionics were made by the Bendix Corporation founded in South Bend in 1924 and at its successive plants elsewhere (the Eclipse Machine works at Elmira, New York, in the founding arrangement; Bendix Pacific and the radio division in their own facilities) — the corporation's South Bend founding and product range are documented in its company histories, and none of those histories places a Bendix factory at New Carlisle. What Bendix had here, from 1966, was a proving ground it had bought — a testing asset, like Studebaker's before it. The washing machines that carried the Bendix name were made by Bendix Home Appliances, a separate South Bend company that licensed the name from 1936 — again, not here. Credit for every one of those products stays in the cities that made them.

Sources:

1. National Register nomination, NRHP 85002430 — Studebaker manufacturing complex in South Bend distinguished from the proving ground three miles south of New Carlisle.
2. Bendix Corporation company histories (Britannica Money, Vincent Bendix; corporation history summaries) — founded 1924 with a factory in South Bend producing brake systems; aviation, radio, and avionics production in the corporation's plants; Bendix Home Appliances a separate South Bend licensee from 1936.