One car, built in secret: the Bendix SWC of 1934

1934

The project: In 1934 the Bendix Corporation built exactly one complete automobile: a hand-built prototype sedan, built under the dummy company name "Steel Wheel Corporation" — the SWC — to hide the project from Bendix's own customers, General Motors among them, which held roughly a quarter of Bendix's stock. The car was a rolling exhibition of everything Bendix sold. It was directed by Vincent Bendix and his engineering vice-president, Victor Kliesrath, and designed by a young Bendix engineer, Alfred M. Ney — "of the Bendix Corporation in South Bend, Indiana," as the marque history's account places him — with Ottavio Capra, Kliesrath's racing-boat mechanic, the mechanics Nathan Byer and Charles Lair, and the Swiss engineer Fred Thomer; the streamlined body was William F. Ortwig's, late of Fisher Body. Where the car was physically built is printed as the record gives it, in two voices: the design and the team were South Bend's, while the worldwide manufacturers' registry places the two and a half years of construction at the Bendix Automotive Development Center at Benton Harbor, Michigan, at a cost of 84,000 dollars.

The car: It was, on paper, a decade early. Front-wheel drive, through Bendix-Weiss constant-velocity joints, from a Continental Series 25A L-head straight-six of eighty-six horsepower reversed in the chassis and rubber-mounted, a three-speed transaxle ahead of the engine. Four-wheel independent suspension on A-arms in rubber blocks, without conventional springs. Four-wheel hydraulic brakes with open, cooled drums. An intended unit body, finished instead as a box-section central member with front and rear subframes, steel panels over a wood frame, aluminum hood, fenders, doors and rear skirts. A 120-inch wheelbase — and a fatal 3,185 pounds against a target weight of 1,500 to 1,700. Its "Finger-Tip Control" preselector shifted the gears electrically. Around those bones stood the company's catalogue: Startix automatic starting, Scintilla magnetos, Stromberg carburetors, Pioneer instruments, Bragg-Kliesrath vacuum brake boosters. Against its deadline Ortwig finished it with a DeSoto Airflow grille and headlamp doors.

The tour, the fall, and the shed: In November 1934 the SWC was taken to Europe and demonstrated to Alvis and Bentley in England, then to Citroën, Peugeot, Renault and Bugatti in France. There were no takers. At Genoa, Italy, a constant-velocity joint broke, and the tour ended; the car came home by rail to Le Havre and aboard the SS Bremen. While the party was in Europe, General Motors exercised its share position and forced Vincent Bendix out of his own company, and the SWC died with his reign. The car was stored for over thirty years in a shed at the Bendix proving grounds in South Bend. In 1967 a Bendix supervisor, Gene Wadzinski, found it, and got it running on his own time; tested in 1971, it still drove badly. Honeywell, Bendix's successor, gave it to the Studebaker National Museum in South Bend, where it is now the museum's property and on display — the only complete automobile the components giant ever built, home in the city whose company designed it.

Sources:

1. Hemmings' accounts of the Bendix SWC — Alfred M. Ney of the Bendix Corporation in South Bend; the Kliesrath direction and the build team; the specification entire (front-wheel drive, the reversed Continental six, the rubber-block suspension, the Finger-Tip Control, the parts showcase); the November 1934 European tour and the Genoa failure; the proving-ground shed, Gene Wadzinski's 1967 revival, and the Honeywell donation to the Studebaker National Museum.
2. Suman-Hreblay's worldwide manufacturers' registry — the two and a half years of construction placed at the Bendix Automotive Development Center, Benton Harbor, Michigan, at $84,000; printed as the registry gives it, against the design's South Bend seat, above.
3. The Businesses and Inventors sections of this history — the Bendix Corporation's South Bend record, of which this car is the automobile-side exhibit.