After the wagon works: the plants' second lives

1966 — present

What became of the ground this section's industry stood on is other sections' record, and this closing entry is their pointer. The Studebaker works' passage — the Chippewa Avenue plant to the Army truck contract and Kaiser Jeep in 1964, the downtown blocks to clearance and, in time, to Ignition Park, where Press Ganey's headquarters now stands on cleared Studebaker ground — stands in the Studebaker and Businesses sections. The Avanti's long afterlife as an independently built car, the direct descendant of this city's last Studebaker line, stands in the Studebaker section. The Bendix ground's passage to Honeywell and the proving grounds where the SWC slept for thirty years stand in the Businesses section. This section's accounting is narrower and can be closed in a sentence: South Bend designed, financed, sold or headquartered far more automobiles than it assembled — the Tincher in its two South Bend years, the Ricketts and the Diamond whole, the Rockne 75 and the last Rockne 10s, a Dispatcher line photographed inside the old wagon plant, and one secret Bendix prototype are the city's own assembly record — and the balance of the account, the Detroit-built Erskines and E-M-Fs and the Mishawaka-built Hummers, is printed in these entries at exactly the addresses the record gives them.

Sources:

1. The Studebaker, Businesses and Exports sections of this history — the plants' successor uses, the Avanti afterlife and Ignition Park, in full; this entry is their pointer, by design.