The Studebaker Museum

where are we I'm not at all sure I believe we're in Indiana but we were just in Michigan and before that we were in Illinois and I just we've crossed borders like crazy but we should be in Indiana and we should be approaching South Bend on interstate 80 but I don't think we're on Interstate 80 sneaking in the back door or something we're just going where Surry tells us to go and that's sort of dangerous that sir is taking us to the Studebaker Museum in South Bend Indiana and she said she could save us 15 minutes on this route so we said sure hope she can save us on an armature it's t-ball she it might be that she can so we're gonna hope for the best in the meantime with any luck at all we're about to arrive at the Studebaker Museum in South Bend Indiana so check this out because Studebakers are in fact cool while Studebakers are no longer made at one time they had the largest car manufacturing facility in America when I was a kid in Salt Lake City a building on State Street burned down revealing this sign which was hidden between the buildings this had been a Studebaker buggy and wagon dealership Studebaker had been building buggies and wagons for 50 years before the first automobiles were ever even heard of John Studebaker built this wagon around 1835 for his family's move from Pennsylvania to Ohio the Studebaker brothers realized that they were pretty good at building wagons mostly wagon wheels and there was a huge desire for that so they opened up a shop as wheelwrights selling wheels for wagons and buggies but they also gained a reputation as just first rate buggy builders they were quite capable of building even the most ornate wagons and buggies so they went into business with this huge factory and started knocking out buggies by the thousands now my great-grandfather had one of these he was a doctor in the Chicago area and he and my grandfather as a small child would travel around to people's houses sometimes doing surgery right on their kitchen table Studebaker had quite a product line and an excellent reputation and a huge factory right here in South Bend Indiana making thousands of buggies and wagons check this out this is a buckboard that they built for the 1893 Columbian Exposition we covered that in the show a couple weeks ago their reputation was so good that America's elite all wanted Studebaker buggies including presidents this is a Landau that they built for president ulysses s grant President Harrison had seven Studebaker carriages of different configurations and this style of carriage was called a Phaeton this one built for President McKinley and this type of carriage is called a brioche this one of course belonging to Abraham Lincoln Lincoln rode in this carriage to the theater of the night of his assassination but as the 19th century gave way to the 20th century it was becoming obvious that the automobile was the new thing this was going to take over the roads and a lot of little car companies sprung up in the area around South Bend here making all types of automobiles now Studebaker had the advantage that they were already selling buggies and wagons they had dealerships all over the country all they needed to do was start building cars and they could start selling them here is the oldest surviving Studebaker car a 19:4 model see the whole thing was a bit experimental at this point they weren't quite sure what they wanted to do so they entered into an agreement with EMF to market the EMF 30 for them they put these cars into the Studebaker dealerships it was so successful that in 1912 they acquired EMF they kept the name EMF for a few years but they effectively became a Studebaker flandres the F in EMF went off to make his own automobile now a lot of the car companies felt that the internal combustion engine was simply too complicated for the average person to ever figure out and so they started making electric cars didn't really work out the electrics were just not that successful this is a peg Studebaker built two of these things and they were used to shuttle Congress people back and forth between the congressional office building and the US Capitol building these early days really belonged to Ford nobody could compete with Ford's price point at only 350 dollars but these Studebakers were much nicer cars and Studebaker had the advantage of having a dealership network already in place and so they were emerging as one of the biggest car company and they were marketing the quality and durability of their cars they entered every conceivable endurance race which they generally won in 1920 they finally gave up on the wagon this is the last wagon ever produced by Studebaker ok this is rather creepy Studebakers could be ordered through third parties in special configurations in this case a children's hearse well the 20s were roaring and so was the competition between the various car manufacturers Studebakers were elegant durable and fun they were still entering a lot of endurance contests and still doing really really well in that area most of the successful small companies were being gobbled up by the larger companies but Studebaker was just too big to buy out so while Ford and General Motors and Chrysler were all expanding like crazy Studebaker just stayed Studebaker in the 1930s Studebaker changed their product line a bit to become a much more elegant car check this out this car has a place for your golf bag they were also working with the luxury car company packard eventually just acquiring packard and making it part of Studebaker Studebaker became a company with a very very loyal customer base there were Studebaker people and not Studebaker people now while Studebaker was never all that inexpensive of a car it wasn't that expensive either they were very rugged very well-built and to some extent very elegant but I think Studebaker realized that if they were going to survive they needed to become more unique they needed to look different than the other cars and in the 1950s they looked a lot different than other cars check out the commander starlight the car was just too extreme for a lot of people's tastes other people found that this was exactly what they wanted in an automobile the commander starlight was certainly unique definitely something different out there in the marketplace and the Studebaker fans all went nuts for it and Studebakers started to become known as the company that was willing to take chances with their styling I guess it's not too surprising for the Muppet movie they chose the commander starlight as Fozzie Bears car they acquired that for the museum and they're currently working on restoring it notice that the driver sat here in the trunk so that the puppeteers could have been hire interior of the car to themselves the poor thing has been severely neglected and they are trying to raise money for the restoration Studebaker had been working with yeeow an Italian design company trying to come up with more exotic European looking designs for their cars one of the cars they came up with was the hawk again something very unique something different on the American highway and very recognizable as a Studebaker Studebaker was banking on the fact that their design team could keep them competitive in the marketplace by coming up with very exotic very unique designs with a bit of a European Flair but a lot of people were finding them to be just a little too extreme for their taste this 56 Packard predictor is just a concept car no they never produced this but it was a way to test the design ideas and boy is this thing extreme but while you might be saying man that thing is actually ugly if you start looking closely at it you're going to see that lots of design ideas here were stolen by the other companies this thing really made an impact in the design teams at other companies some of the ideas were well ignored like these tail fins but if you didn't know you are looking at the packard predictor wouldn't you think you're looking at the front of a 1963 Corvette Stingray and check out this concept for a Packard Hawk also never produced I love this thing this thing is just flat beautiful and here again it's easy to see elements that were borrowed by other cars this is a Bendix swc now Bendix made components for cars but with Studebakers help briefly they were able to build their own car the swc this is a prototype for a 1962 Avante fastback Studebaker did go on to produce the Avant a it didn't look quite like this but it was quite a car there are some other prototypes here in the museum as well and here is the Avant a the most advanced Studebaker ever built by the 1960s Studebaker was in deep financial trouble and they were closing down plants people just didn't want Studebakers anymore and so they felt that if they could come out with the most advanced super car ever built they could put them back on top and the Avante most certainly was that now if you saw these shows on the McBride wrecking yard a few months ago then you've seen a little bit of the Avante history McBride owns and Avante and a rather infamous Avante at that this particular Avante is a race model and it belonged to Andy Granatelli this car was raced at Bonneville by Andy Granatelli this is Denis McBride the owner of the car and the owner of McBride's wrecking yard in Grantsville Utah it was the hope of Studebaker that they'd be able to set the land speed record for production car with an Avant a and Andy Granatelli did just that with this particular Studebaker this particular car was pushed all the way out to a hundred and seventy three miles per hour at the Bonneville Salt Flats at the Museum they have the Rahn Hall of Vontae another 1963 Avante just like the other one but this one has been heavily modified in an attempt to break 200 miles per hour the engine is exactly the same but the car has been lightened and a full roll cage added as well as some improvements to the aerodynamics unfortunately the Avante was not able to save Studebaker turned out to be much more complicated to produced than they ever thought it would be and instead of being able to produce twenty five thousand in 1963 they were only able to produce a few thousand but while Studebaker is gone the museum lives on and what a fascinating and amazing history is represented here there's a lot more to the museum than we've shown you here there's an entire lower level with some military exhibits and also where they sort of warehouse cars that aren't being shown in the upper galleries some of these cars are under restoration some of them are just sort of stored down here for a while and they'll be taken back upstairs and some of omertà just kind of weird like the Jetsons car here well there you go the Studebaker museum and we found it you found it finally we are in fact in the sticks this place reminds me of you - except it's flat there's no mouth it's but beyond that it's very very Utah like which is which is sort of comforting and cool anyway speaking of comforting and cool that is a cool Museum and what an illustrious history Studebaker has and who would have thought that Studebaker I mean I knew that they had a interesting history but holy crap they have a very interesting history CD that was really amazing well if you haven't been over to the channel do pop on over to the channel and you can get there by clicking the blue button when it appears momentarily that says subscribe and that'll make you a subscriber and you do want to be a subscriber because that's cool and you can tell people you're a subscriber so they are bragging rights of course and that button is popping in just now thinks it subscribe and that will take you over to the channel and make you a subscriber well we're not sure how he found this fun and informative and historic and interesting movie on the Internet and we hope you didn't find it boring and we will see you here again in one week with some more massive screwing around see you then bye bye

Channel: Toy Man Television

Views: 461,144

Keywords: Abraham Lincoln, US Presidents, Carrage, Wagon, Avanti, Studabaker, Hawlk, Top Gear, BBC, America, The Studebaker Museum, South Bend Indiana, Studebaker buggies, Auto Museum, peterson auto museum, land speed record, andy granatelli, paxton supercharger, The Studebaker National Museum, muppets, muppet movie car, fozzie bear car, muppet studabaker

Id: hYjcy9tFgZw

Length: 16min 11sec (971 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 07 2016