The last chiefs — Nance, Hurley, Egbert, Burlingame

1954 – 9 December 1963

The merger's chief: When Studebaker combined with Packard on 1 October 1954, the Studebaker-Packard Corporation was formed under Packard's president, James J. Nance. The combination is described in the records of both companies as Packard taking over the larger but weaker Studebaker, and it disappointed from the first accounting: Studebaker's cash position proved worse than it had represented to Packard, a mid-1950s labor dispute cut South Bend employment from about 22,000 to about 7,000 by 1955, and the combined company posted a $43 million loss in 1956 and stood near bankruptcy. In 1956, in an arrangement the Eisenhower administration encouraged, Studebaker-Packard signed a three-year management contract with the aircraft maker Curtiss-Wright, whose president, Roy T. Hurley, set out to cure the company's employment practices; under Curtiss-Wright's guidance the old Detroit Packard plant was sold and the company turned toward diversification.

The last president of the car company: Sherwood Egbert, a 40-year-old former Marine who had turned around the McCulloch company, took the presidency in February 1961. His first winter brought the works its hardest labor fight: a strike at the South Bend plant beginning 1 January 1962 ran 38 days before Egbert and the UAW's Walter Reuther settled it. Egbert's answer to the company's image was a halo car: the Avanti, designed in about forty days by a small Loewy team in a rented Palm Springs house and unveiled on 26 April 1962, the last new Studebaker. Production never reached the plan — 4,643 Avantis in all — and the continuing speculation that Studebaker was about to leave the automobile business worked as a self-fulfilling prophecy, as buyers would not risk an orphan car. Egbert was ousted from the presidency in November 1963, and Byers Burlingame succeeded him. On Monday, 9 December 1963, the board — under its chairman, Randolph Guthrie — voted to close the South Bend plant and consolidate automobile production at Hamilton, Ontario. The diversified corporation that survived the closing had later chiefs, but they belong to no South Bend record reached for this section: the name ended its corporate life in 1979, and the succession after Burlingame is a named gap here.

Sources:

1. Studebaker — "The Packard merger and the Curtiss-Wright management" (the 1 October 1954 combination under James J. Nance; the $43 million loss of 1956; the 1956 Curtiss-Wright management contract and Roy T. Hurley); "The Lark, and the forty days of the Avanti" and "December 1963" (Egbert's February 1961 arrival, the 38-day strike and the Reuther settlement, the Avanti program and 4,643 built, the November 1963 ouster and Burlingame's succession, the board vote of 9 December 1963 under Chairman Randolph Guthrie); "The company after cars" (the name's end in 1979).