Studebaker attempted to take on the low-priced field in 1927 with the Erskine, which the company billed as The Little Aristocrat.

The mind behind the Erskine, naturally enough, was Albert A. Erskine, the highly-regarded chief executive at Studebaker, who joined the Indiana automaker in 1911 and quickly rose to the top position in 1915. He envisioned his namesake product as a European-style low-priced car for American buyers, but with appeal to the export markets as well. In the late ’20s, Studebaker had no entries in the U.S. low-priced field, where the real volume was, and which Erskine saw as a strategic weakness.

A complete departure from Studebaker’s existing product line, then priced in Buick territory, the Erskine was to be assembled not in South Bend but at the company’s Piquette Avenue plant in Detroit. Bodies were designed by Ray Dietrich and manufactured by Budd, while the L-head six-cylinder engine (146 CID, 44 hp) was outsourced from Continental. With its modest 108-in wheelbase, the Erskine promised “big car ability, small car agility,” the company declared, and the Model 50 made its debut in October of 1926 in Paris, where it was billed as The Little Aristocrat.

There was one problem with the plan, however, and it was a big one: price. At $995 to  start, and even after several price cuts, the Erskine cost several hundred dollars more than its growing list of competitors, including Ford Model A, Chevrolet, Plymouth, and the popular Willys-Overland Whippet. Annual sales languished at around 25,000 vehicles, barely making a dent in the low-priced class with its enormous volume of millions of cars per year.

In an attempt to adjust course and salvage the brand, Studebaker management steadily moved the Erskine upmarket with the 1928 Model 51 and 1929 Model 52, bumping up its size and features. For the 1930 Model 53 (above) the wheelbase was lengthened to 114 inches and now the engine was a Studebaker-based 205 CID six with 70 hp. The Erskine was now essentially a base-model Studebaker, and in May of 1930, the final year of production, Erskine was formally absorbed into the Studebaker Corporation. The company would return to the low-priced market one year later with another new brand, Rockne.