E-M-F: bought for its factories, remembered for its failures

1908 – 1912

The agreement: In September 1908 Studebaker contracted with the E-M-F Company of Detroit — Everitt, Metzger, and Flanders — on new terms: E-M-F would manufacture the cars and Studebaker would distribute them exclusively through its wagon dealers. It was meant to give Studebaker a quality product without the Garford entanglements. It did not. The E-M-F cars proved disastrously unreliable; the initials were read back by owners as "Every Morning Fix-it" and "Easy Mark's Favorite," the worst trouble being rear-axle failure, and the three partners fell to infighting — Everitt and Metzger left in mid-1909 to found what became the Flanders Automobile Company, and Flanders followed them in 1912.

The buyout: Studebaker's president Fred Fish had bought one-third of E-M-F's stock in 1908; in 1910 he acquired the remainder from J.P. Morgan & Co., with E-M-F's plants at Detroit and at Walkerville, Ontario, across the river. In January 1911 Studebaker bought Ford's former Piquette Avenue plant in Detroit as an assembly plant (Studebaker Plant 10, used until 1933). Studebaker then spent $1 million sending mechanics to visit disgruntled owners and replace defective parts — the remedy campaign from which, in the marque historian Maurice Hendry's account, came the company's aim to design "for life" and the rugged Big Six and Special Six lines that followed. The E-M-F products were rebadged for their remaining sales — the E-M-F as the Studebaker 30, the Flanders as the Studebaker 20 — and sold through the end of 1912. The first gasoline automobiles fully manufactured by Studebaker itself were marketed in August 1912.

Sources:

1. Standard encyclopedia history of Studebaker — the September 1908 distribution agreement, the cars' unreliability and the nicknames, the partners' departures, Fish's 1908 one-third purchase and the 1910 acquisition of the remainder from J.P. Morgan & Co. with the Detroit and Walkerville plants, the Piquette Avenue purchase of January 1911, the $1 million owner-remedy campaign and Hendry's "design for life" account, the Studebaker 30 and 20 rebadging through 1912, and the first fully Studebaker-manufactured gasoline cars of August 1912.