🎧 334: In time, prosperity . . .

13

In Which Coarse Goods Buy Herb and Lorna a Home of Their Own

IN TIME, prosperity, at least relative prosperity, returned. The new management at Studebaker strengthened the company by eliminating weaknesses. They gave up on their unprofitable line of small, economical cars named for Knute Rockne, the football coach at Notre Dame, and sold the Peirce-Arrow company, which Studebaker had owned since 1928. By 1935, Studebakers were selling well again, and the company was turning a profit. The Babbington dealership was sold to out-of-towners who paid its debts, and Herb was able to smile and pretend that he agreed with Lorna when she told him that events had proved that he hadn’t done a foolish Piper thing after all. The new owners built a modern showroom down the street from the original site, and at the grand opening Garth gave a good imitation of his old charm and verve.
     Studebaker then took a step the importance of which can’t be exaggerated. The company hired Raymond Loewy, the gifted visionary, as its chief designer. Loewy’s arrival ushered in a period of daring, distinctive design that set Studebakers emphatically apart from other makes. In 1950 he and the team he directed would produce the famous bullet-nosed models and, a few years later, the beautiful Starliner coupes, but in the opinion of more than one Studebaker historian, the Loewy designs would lead, ultimately, to the demise of the company. Ina Schildkraut, for example, writing in Those Fabulous Studes, says of Loewy’s impact on the fortunes of the company:

     Loewy’s was a classic case — the case of the artist (an artist whose medium was the sheet-metal skins of automobiles) with ideas too avant-garde for mass taste. From the very first, Loewy’s designs disturbed the hidebound Yahoos who, sad to say, bought most of the cars produced in this country. Their reaction was the familiar one of half-wits everywhere when confronted with something they don’t understand. They shielded themselves with ridicule, mockery. Philistines from coast to coast found that Loewy’s designs inspired them to commit humor. Typical: the gas jockey’s exaggerated puzzlement over which end of the car was supposed to receive the gas. Droll, no? Add any number of variations on, “Say, Bub, how can you tell if you’re comin’ or goin’ in that thing?” Loewy’s designs for Studebaker were among the most exciting in the history of the automobile, but (sad to say, oh, sad to say) hiring him and giving him his head may well have been the worst business decisions in the history of the company.

     The ultimate failure of Studebaker was still a long way off, however, and for the time being Lorna and Herb were enjoying the feeling that they had made it through difficult times. They were doing all right again, and they felt that they needed, and deserved, a reward. The reward that occurred to both of them was a home of their own.

In Topical Guide 334, Mark Dorset considers Design: Automotive: Innovative; Innovation: Resistance to; and Historical Personages, Real and Fictional from this episode.

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