At Studebaker, Dictator seemed like a perfectly good name for an automobile for a time, but it didn’t age well at all.

1927 Studebaker Dictator Standard Six Sport Roadster

The Dictator name first appeared at Studebaker in 1927 as the Indiana carmaker adopted an unusual theme for its model line. The new system, roughly speaking, was based on positions in government. For the next several years, the Studebaker lineup would include, in ascending order in price and equipment, the Dictator, the Commander, and the President. There was initially a fourth model in this naming scheme, the Chancellor, but it was dropped after the first year.

With its position on the bottom rung of this model ladder, the Dictator was described by Studebaker as “a fine car at a moderate price” that would “dictate the standards” for the mid-priced field. It was positioned below the President and Commander, but above the company’s popularly-priced companion makes, Erskine and Rockne. (See our feature on the Rockne here.) As befitting the Dictator’s station in the lineup, power was typically provided by an L-head inline six, but from 1929 through 1932, there was a Dictator Eight in the lineup as well, sporting a 221 cubic-inch straight eight under the hood. The Dictator was “a brilliant example of excess power,” the Studebaker ad writers proclaimed.

1934 Studebaker Dictator Regal Convertible Roadster

When Studebaker quietly dropped the Dictator name for 1938, moving the Commander into the bottom slot in the product line, the company didn’t state any specific reason, but it’s easy enough to guess. Authoritarian governments were then on the rise throughout Europe, alarmingly, and the term dictator was gaining an increasingly dishonorable connotation. In fact, Studebaker had recognized almost from the beginning that the Dictator label was at least problematic in many parts of the world, as the export vehicles for Europe and the British Empire were renamed Director.

In hindsight, many historians have wondered how the Dictator name could have ever seemed like a good idea. The prolific automotive writer Richard M. Langworth, for one, has called the name “bizarre” and “un-American.” Among other things, the Dictator period at Studebaker illustrates how words can shift in meaning and in the images they evoke, often in a very few years. Meanwhile, the President and Commander names remained in the Studebaker lineup for decades to come.

1937 Studebaker Dictator Crusing Sedan, below and at top