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1911 – 1919
The incorporation: The wagon company and the car company became one corporation on 14 February 1911, when the Studebaker Corporation was incorporated under New Jersey law, taking over the Studebaker Brothers Manufacturing Company and E-M-F; the combined assets came to $15.4 million, in the company-derived accounts. The financing was handled by Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs, whose board representatives — Henry Goldman especially — the company histories remember with esteem; the same two houses recur at the company's rescue twenty-two years later. Electric vehicles were discontinued the same year.
The engineering generation: The corporation's first decade made its engineering name. The 1913 six-cylinder models were the first Studebaker cars with monobloc engine casting. A 28-year-old chief engineer, Fred M. Zeder, and his colleagues Owen R. Skelton and Carl Breer — "the Three Musketeers" of the company's own lore — launched the successful 1918 models before leaving in 1920 to form the consultancy that became the nucleus of Chrysler Engineering. Under the corporation the famous lines took their names: the Big Six and the Special Six, engineered for durability in reaction to the E-M-F failures.
The war orders: At the outbreak of the First World War the orders came by cable from London: the British government's first orders included 3,000 transport wagons, 20,000 sets of artillery harness, and 60,000 artillery saddles, with ambulances and hundreds of cars bought through the London office; similar orders followed from France and Russia. It was the last major war fought substantially with horse-drawn transport, and the wagon works — still building vehicles by the tens of thousands: in the seven years to 1918 the company sold 466,962 horse-drawn vehicles against 277,035 automobiles — supplied it as it had supplied the Union. When Erskine's company history was published in 1918, the seven Studebaker plants' annual capacity stood at 100,000 automobiles, 75,000 horse-drawn vehicles, and about $10 million of spare parts.
The end of the wagon: John M. Studebaker, who died in 1917 the last of the five brothers, had always held the automobile to be complementary to the wagon. The market closed the question: in 1919 Erskine ordered the removal of the last wagon gear, and the regular manufacture of horse-drawn vehicles — the business of 1852 — ended. A truck line took the wagons' place in the range.
Sources:
- Standard encyclopedia history of Studebaker, citing Erskine (1918) and the marque literature — the 14 February 1911 incorporation and the Lehman–Goldman financing, the discontinuation of the electrics, monobloc casting in 1913, Zeder, Skelton, and Breer and their 1920 departure, the British orders of 1914 (3,000 wagons, 20,000 harness sets, 60,000 saddles) and the French and Russian orders, the 1918 capacity figures, the seven years' sales of 466,962 horse-drawn vehicles against 277,035 automobiles, and the 1919 removal of the last wagon gear.
- Car marque registers — the combined $15.4 million of assets at the 1911 incorporation, as carried in the company-derived timelines.