The gift of 1966 and the wandering years

Deeded to the city, 1966 — a permanent home in 2005

The deed: In 1966, the year the last Studebaker was built, the Studebaker Corporation deeded its original vehicle collection and its archives to the City of South Bend, "with the agreement that the city would provide a suitable home to house and display the collection," in the words of the museum's archivist Andrew Beckman. The size of that original collection is one of this record's honest conflicts: the city's visitor bureau, in its account of the museum's Original Collection, gives thirty-three vehicles; the archivist's account, carried in Hemmings, gives a core of thirty-seven. Both figures stand in the published record, and they are printed here together rather than reconciled.

The wandering: The suitable home took thirty-nine years to arrive. The collection remained in the Studebaker administration building through the early 1970s; it was kept for a time in the city's waterworks maintenance shop; from 1977 through the late 1980s it was displayed in the Century Center, the convention center downtown; and its last temporary home was the former Freeman-Spicer Studebaker dealership — the company's cars exhibited in a building that had once sold them — until 2005. In 1985 the not-for-profit Studebaker National Museum, Inc. was created to hold the museum's work in corporate form, twenty years before it had a building of its own. The United States Senate, honoring the museum in October 2005, put the whole arrangement in one sentence: in 1966 the corporation "donated its collection of rare and antique vehicles, beginning the automobile collection at the Studebaker National Museum."

Sources:

1. Hemmings, "Studebaker National Museum" (2018) — archivist Andrew Beckman on the 1966 deed and the city's agreement, the administration building years, the Century Center display of 1977 through the late 1980s, the Freeman-Spicer dealership, the core of thirty-seven vehicles, and the creation of Studebaker National Museum, Inc. in 1985.
2. Visit South Bend Mishawaka, Studebaker National Museum — the Original Collection of thirty-three vehicles given in 1966, including the presidential carriages and the family Conestoga wagon.
3. Classic Cars Journal (2014) — the waterworks maintenance shop among the collection's homes.
4. Congressional Record, Senate, 26 October 2005 — "Honoring the Studebaker National Museum": the 1966 donation and the museum's standing in the community.