Studebaker was years ahead of the industry in several important safety advances. Learn about the important features in this original 1964 promotional clip.
At Studebaker for 1964, the marketing message was “Different by Design,” and that happened to be the product strategy of Studebaker president Sherwood Egbert as well. He wisely saw that the company had no hope of competing head-on against the Detroit Three. If Studebaker had a future, it was in carving out its own market segments and appealing directly to car buyers who were already looking for something different. It was a sound strategy, in our view anyway. But unfortunately, Egbert was forced to step down due to poor health in November of 1963, not long after the ’64 models were launched, and the company ceased U.S. production just before Christmas.
A key element of the Different by Design concept was safety, a subject that was largely avoided by the Detroit automakers at the time. (Ralph Nader’s industry-shaking book, Unsafe at any Speed, appeared the following year. You can read it here.) In the original ’64 Studebaker spot below, the company’s safety improvements included Bendix front disc brakes with a dual-circuit master cylinder and a padded, safety-engineered instrument panel—all important advances that the rest of the industry would soon adopt. Studebaker’s body-on-frame construction is also claimed as a safety feature, but the ad writers may have been reaching for that one. Video follows.
Studebaker was always ahead of the market. Too far, sometimes. Too bad their management was so far behind. They waited until it was too late to help themselves, and when they did try, made poor decisions that cost them in the long run. I really wish they could have made it, it would have been interesting to see them through the pony and musclecar wars….