The company was in business for over a century, from 1852 to 1966, building carriages and later automobiles. But, beleaguered and in terminal financial trouble, it finally met its end in Hamilton.

Stu Chapman was 29-years-old when he joined the company in 1963—only a few years before it closed. He was the director of advertising and public relations. 

“Well, it was a gamble,” he admits. “It really was a gamble because you know: wife, two children and a mortgage. I had a lot of people say, ‘they’re not gonna make it, you’re crazy.’ But, I decided it would be worth my while to make the move [to Studebaker]—and, as it turned out, it’s provided a life-long connection.” 

From where we’re standing on Ferrie St. East, outside of downtown Hamilton, Chapman can see his old office. (See it for yourself here on Google Street View.) “If you look at the front door, my office was the second one on the second floor,” he says. The brickwork is in great shape, but the windows have long since been covered over with corrugated metal.

George Wingfield’s last day at the company was March 16, 1966, when he worked on the assembly line. “We basically ran the line out, and then we went home when it was done.

That’s the way it ran out. It was sad, but what’re you gonna do? That’s life,” he says with an almost cheery smile. “I put the dash in the last car, my partner and I. It was the very last one, the one that’s in the museum in South Bend, [Indiana] now.” It’s clearly a point of pride. “They had a good car because it was different. It was very much different.” 

All the men who built the last car that is in the museum (in Studebaker's original hometown) put their signatures on it. 

Studebaker facts

We started researching Studebaker and are geeking out over the sheer rafts of neat info on the defunct company. Here are just a few interesting tidbits*

• The H & C Studebaker blacksmith shop was opened in South Bend, Indiana on February 16, 1852.
• The company becomes the world’s largest manufacturer of wagons and buggies, making 75,000 annually in 98 acres of factories and with 3,000 employees.
• By 1875, Studebaker's made its first million dollars.
• Studebaker made a carriage for Ulysses S. Grant and three other U.S. presidents.
• Studebaker introduced its first automobile in 1902 powered by electricity—top speed 20 km/h. Thomas Edison purchases the second car.
• Studebaker can claim many automotive firsts, including four-wheel hydraulic brakes in 1925 (many pundits at the time considered it "unsafe to stop so quickly.")
• In 1931, Studebaker introduces the Rockne, a car named after Notre Dame Football coach, Knute Rockne. The university is also located in South Bend.
• In 1938, Studebaker plants a half-mile long pine tree sign spelling its name next to its proving ground. Today it's listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest living advertising sign.
• Studebaker supplied military vehicles for six different wars. Its military contracts would be taken over by a company that became AM General and built the Humvee.
• More than 200 types of cars were produced in Indiana during the first two decades of the 20th century. The only Indiana auto maker that survived past World War II was Studebaker.
• 1950 was Studebaker’s record year, with more than 400,000 cars and trucks built.
• In December of 1963, Studebaker closes its South Bend factory. The head office moves to Hamilton, Ontario.
• The Hamilton police buy 20 Commander sedans in 1964 to show support for the company.
• On March 17th, 1966 the last Studebaker rolls off the line in Hamilton, a 'Timberline Turquoise' Daytona.
• The Studebaker National Museum in South Bend has 120 vehicles in its collection, more than 70 tons of paper documents and "400,000 engineering drawings, photos, production records, newspaper articles and other artifacts." on file. The oldest records date to 1854.

The parking lot beside the factory that was once filled with completed Studebakers is covered with grass now. Nothing much seems to be going on at the building, the property cordoned off with barbed-wire fence.

The 20 classic Studebakers which have made the trip from around the province for this homecoming line up along the street, in front of that empty lot.

John Spillett was at Studebaker the longest of the three company veterans who are in attendance. “I worked in the building during the war, when they built Bofors guns,” he says in his slow, deliberate voice. 

“Then one of the supervisors from there got a job with Studebaker and he called us and five of us went and worked for them in May of 1948. I worked there until they closed up in ’66 March. The other fellas that were there, they’re all older than me, and they’re all gone now. So I’m the last survivor of that group.”

He wears a Studebaker button on his tweed blazer now, but he doesn’t drive one. “No, no. I can’t afford one. And besides, where I live in a condo, you can’t work on one in the garage, so…” he trails off. “No, I just feel close with them.”

The Hamilton Chapter of the Studebaker Drivers Club organized this homecoming. It was as much a photo opportunity for this story as it was a chance for them to get together, take out their cars, and see the old factory with their own eyes. 

It was a sweet and nostalgic day, but it was also a stark reminder of how times have changed in this little corner of Canada.

When it was incorporated in 1868, the Studebaker Brothers Manufacturing Company made horse-drawn wagons and carriages. Headquartered in South Bend, Indiana, it supplied transportation to farmers and the military long before the invention of the internal combustion engine. 

By the end of the century, the company could boast that it was, “the largest vehicle house in the world” with the main South Bend facility covering some 20 acres. 

In 1902 Studebaker made the move to automobiles, first with an electric-vehicle, and then with gasoline-powered cars.

In 1947, the Canadian government sold the old Bofors gun factory in Hamilton’s industrial district to the newly formed Studebaker of Canada Ltd. There, on Aug 18, 1948, the first Hamilton-built Studebaker rolled off the line. 

The people who worked at Studebaker were innovative types. The company was the first to build a controlled test track, the first to cast six-cylinder engines in block, the first to use mechanical power steering, the first to mass-produce a car with a hard-top body…This list goes on.

“To sort of finger a point of discussion about what attracted people to Studebaker, it’s hard to say because we didn’t sell that many,” says Stu Chapman. 

“The biggest selling years for the corporation were 1950 and ‘51, with the ‘Bullet Nose.’ We sold over 200,000, each year for those two years. After that, we never came close to that.”

“Our slogan was ‘the common sense car,’” remembers the veteran ad man. “And it was almost a default situation because we couldn't afford to change it.”

By 1963, Studebaker was in serious financial trouble and the historic South Bend factory was shuttered.

“South Bend had to close because it was really ancient,” Chapman remembers. “A couple of the plants were on earthen floors, or wooden floors. When I first went there in ’63, I couldn’t believe my eyes that anything could be this old. But some of those things were built in the late 1800s.”

Part of the reason for the financial trouble was that the company just couldn’t build cars quickly enough. 

George Wingfield went to Ford after Studebaker closed. “I know Ford was running about 54 [vehicles] per hour. And we were running six,” he says. Shifting all production operations up to Hamilton just seemed to be a way to postpone the inevitable.

Hamilton was a hub of industrial activity in those days, but the demise of Studebaker in 1966 marked the beginning of the end of the city’s industrial heyday. “When Studebaker was there, so was International Harvester, Firestone, Stelco, Dofasco, Slater Steel and many others, Proctor & Gamble…Dofasco is still there, and we’re not sure about Stelco—they haven’t produced anything for about a year—but everybody else is gone,” says Chapman. “So, Studebaker was the first, but it was one of many to die—which is very unfortunate.”

At its peak in Canada, in and around ’63, Studebaker employed about 1,200 people. By the very end, in ’66, that was down to less than 700. “That was still a lot of employees to have to put out in those days,” Chapman says.

“Well, we knew it was gonna happen and weren’t too happy about it,” John Spillett says. He was with the Studebaker Canada Ltd. for 18 years—from beginning to end. “The parent company in the States, the board of directors, decided that they can make more money with other things than building cars. But, ah, these things happen. I got jobs right afterwards, but it was a disappointment because we were quite proud of the cars we built.” 

All three men found jobs right away. It was easy, they said. Chapman says, “It was a good time for industry generally. It really was. Unemployment was like three percent. Compare that to today…” The latest figures from Statistics Canada put the national unemployment rate at 7.1 percent as of October 2011. That’s pretty terrible, but still an improvement from nearly nine percent unemployment in 2009.

After Studebaker went under, the building was sold to Otis elevators, then the Allen Candy Company, and eventually a speculator who still owns it today. Chapman has been inside the building, and says it’s just a warehouse now. The owner didn’t want to tell Chapman what exactly was being stored there to protect his clients. 

The letters are faint, but the writing is still on the wall. “STUDEBAKER” is writ large across the brown brick of this anonymous warehouse outside downtown Hamilton. You wouldn’t notice the letters unless you were looking for them, but they’re visible from the north side of the old factory, which borders Burlington Ave. East. (See for yourself here on Google Street View.)

From there, we travelled in convoy—all 20 Studebakers cutting through Hamilton, line astern—to 220 Dundurn St. South. 

In 1965, for a brief moment, it looked like the company had a future, and moved marketing, advertising, fleet sales, and parts and service operations to this new office. The idea was to free up space at the Burlington St. factory. The Dundurn office didn’t even last a year.

Now, the windows are boarded up, and the building is fenced off. It’s a beautiful brick building, and it seems like such a waste to have it derelict, sitting on good city real estate. (See it for yourself here on Google Street View.) “It became a squatters’ paradise and had a couple of fires and I don’t know what its future is going to be,” Chapman says. The line up of brightly coloured vintage cars does draw a crowd though. A busker from the Beer Store across the street shows particular interest. 

From the Dundurn office, we drove to farm country outside Hamilton, to the home of club members Sharon and Wayne Pearce where they were hosting a club meeting. The cars line up next to a row of corn. Club members sit around in lawn chairs, taking care of official business. 

Topics at the meeting include: recap of the minutes from the last meeting, past and upcoming shows and events, as well as a debate on where to hold this year’s Christmas party. 

Globally, the Club has some 14,000 members across 44 countries. The Hamilton branch has 68 members with 40 cars between them. That’s quite a following for a company that hasn’t made a single new car in 45 years. 

“Well, actually, if you check with most Studebaker drivers, they’re all a little different,” says Art Unger, editor of Turning Wheels, the magazine of the Studebaker Drivers Club. “Rebels, of a sort. Maybe even, anti-social – sometimes. But always a little different. And interested in the underdog.”

For some, like Chapman, Wingfield, and Spillett, these cars are a big part of their lives and life’s work. For others, these are the cars of their youth, or the cars of their parents’ youth. The club is a support group for Studebaker addicts; a place where they can help each other find parts or advice. And it’s a social thing, an excuse for a good BBQ.

But visiting the old factories and offices, wasn’t just a sweet and wonderful trip down nostalgia lane. Seeing the buildings now sitting on once-prime real estate, as warehouse or derelict squatters apartments is a reminder of how things have changed here. 

Hamilton isn’t the great manufacturing city it once was. Jobs are scarce now, as unemployment remains high.

For the 1,200 workers recently laid off when Ford closed its St. Thomas, Ont. factory, finding a job won’t be nearly as painless as it was for Chapman, Spillett and Wingfield. The Studebaker assembly lines and offices where these men once worked are now full of boxes—storage for things built somewhere else.

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Thanks to Stu Chapman, who put his old public relations skills to use in organizing this homecoming road-trip, the Hamilton Chapter of the Studebaker Drivers Club who made this all possible, as well as Sharon and Wayne Pearce for their BBQ and hospitality. 

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