(first published 8/31/2011) In its last two years, Studebaker blasted more new or heavily revised vehicles out the door than at any time after World War II. The GT Hawk, the Avanti and a heavily facelifted Lark were in showrooms for 1962. For 1963, the company’s showcase product was the Wagonaire. As Studebaker’s big product for the year, the Wagonaire was featured and promoted heavily in television and print ads. Many times, an ad campaign uses several different pieces hammering the same theme. But Studebaker’s ad agency (D’Arcy Advertising) did the opposite. Was this an approach born from the desperation encircling South Bend in 1963? Or was it a studied attempt to introduce a new and unique feature in as many different forms as possible to convey the car’s possiblities to the widest possible audience? Take a look at the ads below and decide for yourself.
The black and white print ads saved money, but were also the product of D’Arcy Advertising trying to be more creative for the demanding Sherwood Egbert. Perhaps the black and white ad campaign for Volkswagen was an influence. The message here is purely factual. Here is what the car is and how it works. The car was touted as 3 cars in one – a sedan, a convertible and a cargo carrier.
This ad uses line drawings to depict the car and set the scene. Now, the message shifts to more imaginative uses – Just think, your own personal parade review stand!
This ad reflects reality. Movietone News United Press International bought a fleet of 30 Wagonaires for use as camera cars. This ad uses the good old fashioned testamonial, and refers to the car as “The World’s Only Wagon Convertible.”
Not all of the ads were black and white. This full color ad is a bold, whimsical exaggeration of the car’s capabilities, and an interesting mix of a photographed car in front of painted artwork. If that was not enough, they threw in a contest to give away a Wagonaire and other prizes in a Million Dollar Sweepstakes.
So what was the Wagonaire, exactly? The advertising message was that the car was anything you wanted it to be. Actually, the ads did a pretty good job of prompting the imagination. So many uses and concepts flowing from a simple sliding roof. We will always wonder what could have been here. If this had been a Ford Better Idea, would we all take sliding roofs for granted in our minivans and Suburbans today? We will never know. Or maybe, it was just a sliding metal panel without a lot of genuine utility. But if that was really true, the advertising campaign did a pretty good job of making it seem like a lot more.
And don’t forget that Studebaker was a major sponsor of “Mr. Ed” !
The ads ran (integrated into the show at times-a major no-no today) until Studey pulled out at the end of ’64.Ford sponsored the last year of the show.
One episode even features an Avanti !
@ And don’t forget that Studebaker was a major sponsor of “Mr. Ed” !
That’s right, Wilburrrr.
We plan to have more on this later today.
I’ve always been struck by the slogan, “From the advanced thinking of Studebaker.” That from a carmaker whose product line was the most dated of any of the American automakers. Even the Avanti was based on an ancient chassis.
Studebaker was trying to sell itself as something it could no longer be. That’s a big reason why Egbert Sherwood failed to turn Studebaker around.
It was worse. Egbert was hired from McCullough to basically wind down auto production…Studebaker had diversified a few years earlier, buying Gravely, Onan and STP. Egbert was young but hard-headed, and the feeling was, he’d work toward the goal of ending auto production while protecting the downsized Studebaker from dealer lawsuits.
Sadly for the board, Egbert, who knew nothing about cars, became enthusiastic about the business. He jerked the corporation in the OTHER direction, rush-jobbing the Avanti through. I’ve never read of what the Directors’ reaction was; but perhaps they thought their boy-wonder could pull it off.
Wasn’t in the cards, though. Egbert developed terminal cancer, and the results of a 1962 strike and an untenable contract, combined to bring a vote to close the South Bend plant while Egbert was off on leave. From there on, as Canadian manager Gordon Grundy was to learn, it was about leaving the product to become obsolete, scaling back dealers, and waiting for the time to be right.
It wasn’t that Egbert failed. What he failed at was to understand the auspices under which he was hired; and then the failing of his health. In the mindset of the Board, Studebaker was no longer a player in the auto market – the decision having been made to use Lark profits for diversification instead of model development.
Egbert did the Avanti on the cheap, so perhaps that is why the board of directors approved it. It’s also worth noting that Studebaker sales experienced a slight blip when he came on board and managed to spruce up the Larks and Hawks for 1962. It helped that sales for the industry were up for 1962, as the economy recovered from the brief recession of 1961.
The real problem was that, in the long run, the cars had no chance against the all-new 1962 Ford Fairlane, 1963 Plymouth Valiant/Dodge Dart and 1963 Rambler Classic/Ambassador. The board recognized this…and the banks were reluctant to lend the company money for the badly needed revamp of the Lark.
Supposedly the banks demanded as collateral for the loans all of the company’s non-automotive divisions. Even Egbert balked at that one, and there was no way any responsible board would have agreed, given the tough competition in the auto market at that time.
Egbert’s illness was merely an excuse to get rid of him. By the fall of 1963 his days were numbered anyway because some of his key diversification choices had gone sour and the 1964 models failed to revive sales despite some new sheetmetal for the Lark.
It’s unclear to me from the automotive histories I’ve read whether the board forced Egbert to abort the original redesign of the Lark in 1962, which offered the first brand-new Studebaker body since 1953. Although the mockups weren’t terribly exciting, they should have been modern enough to be reasonably competitive through the mid-60s.
If Egbert had more automotive experience he could have played his cards much better. Almost all of his ideas were failures, e.g., the centerpiece of his strategy — the Avanti — sold remarkably badly even after production glitches were fixed. Studebaker needed a volume leader and that’s what Egbert largely ignored until it was too late.
In retrospect, it’s obvious that the Avanti never had a chance against either the Ford Thunderbird or Pontiac Grand Prix. Its styling was simply too “out there” for its intended audience, and the mechanicals were woefully outdated.
Popular Mechanics had a race car driver – his name escapes me – test a 1963 Avanti, Thunderbird, Riviera and Corvette at Lime Rock and on the road. He didn’t have too many kind words for the Avanti, while he loved the Corvette, and gave good marks to both the Thunderbird and Riviera as highway cruisers.
Seems like these articles are never out of date – it’s 12 years later, but your comment piqued my curiosity.
The tester was John Fitch. Here’s the PM article’s text, from the Avanti Owners Assn site:
https://theavanti.com/63popular_mechanics.html
“Egbert’s illness was merely an excuse to get rid of him. By the fall of 1963 his days were numbered anyway because some of his key diversification choices had gone sour and the 1964 models failed to revive sales despite some new sheetmetal for the Lark.”
I doubt this. First, Egbert came onboard after, not during, the diversification program was put forth. Studebaker’s board made the choice to plow the profits from the 1959 and 1960 Lark years into other industries, instead of re-investing in product.
That was the death knell; and it shows the point at which the board made up its mind to slowly leave the auto market.
Second, I’m not aware of any major diversification purchases that went bad. The big ones were Gravely Tractor; STP, and Onan, which made industrial generators. All were successful; and all still exist with other owners.
Third, the board knew, when they closed South Bend and pared down to one basic model, on one small line, that it and they would not be competitive. The board was unhappy with Egbert’s attempts to generate excitement in the Studebaker line…Paxton superchargers, disc brakes, Avanti. They wanted OUT.
Later chairman Byers Burlingame was devastating in letters to Canadian Manager Gordon Grundy when he, Grundy, suggested the company try and recruit more dealers. And the announced decision to close the line in 1966, was a reply to Grundy’s request for development money for the 1967s and beyond.
The Studebaker board was playing a nasty, double-dealing game at the time. The STATED reason for firing Egbert may have been poor sales. In truth, it almost certainly was for too much enthusiasm – and sales not down ENOUGH.
Hemmings has a well-informed article with many ways Studebaker could have at least stayed in the car business. “If it had really wanted to.”
Hemmings Classic Car, January, 2007, “Could Studebaker Have Survived?” by Patrick Foster
http://www.hemmings.com/hcc/stories/2007/01/01/hmn_feature8.html
They certainly squandered a potentially valuable dealer network. Easy pickings for Japanese vendors seeking US distribution. How many Datsun 1600 sports cars stood where Avantis had been just before?
I love those documentary-style ads, like the one in Spain. You wouldn’t see that anymore. I bet the Wagonaire was a curiosity there back then.
Very interesting series of ads…but who, exactly, was Allan Jones? I’ve never even heard of him. Was he part of the cast of Mister Ed?
And I’ve never seen the wheelcovers used in the second ad. Were they stock Studebaker wheelcovers, but available as an option?
Who was Allen Jones? Until you asked, I didn’t know either. He was the singing straight man in the 1930s Marx Brothers movies A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races. His last movie was in 1941. I guess Studebaker was not paying top dollar for testimonials in 1963.
Allan Jones played Wilbur on that talking horse show,and Studebaker was one of the sponsors.Allan Jones was also in George Pal`s “The Time Machine”. He`s the one who said “he`s got all the time in the world” with a fake Scottish accent at the end of the movie.
I had understood that it was Alan Young who played Wilbur and that former western star Allan Lane voiced Ed the horse. Maybe with all the Alans and Allens involved in the TV show, nobody would notice that they picked another one who was pretty much an old has-been to do the testimonial. 🙂
Having worked in the advertising world…one part of these ads smacks of desparation – the failure to work up a branding statement, a slogan, and stick to it. “The World’s Only Wagon-Convertible” should’ve been prominent in all of these print ads…(actually I like “The World’s Only Convertible-Wagon”).
Although the overall message speaks to the Wagonaire’s versatility, and the illustrations cover that part of it well, the lack of a coherent descriptive slogan didn’t help. I’m guessing the agency brought this stuff up and the client overruled…eventually you reach the point where if you’re the agency, you shut up, cash the client’s checks and start looking for a new client to replace the billing lost when the old client goes belly-up.
Not that clever marketing could’ve saved Studebaker…but then again look what it did in launching Saturn…
GM recycled the Wagonaire idea for it’s Envoy XUV. I think that didn’t sell well either.
It’s worth mentioning that the 2001 Honda Model X concept, which became the Element, had the sliding roof as well. The production Element just had a pop-up/pop-out moonroof in the rear.
As it turned out, another company would later sell a crossover also called the Model X that, like Honda’s Model X, had a portal that cut deeply into the roof. Only difference was that it is on the sides rather than in back. Well that and it opens a bit differently too…
D’oh! I saw the Envoy was covered in another blog. My bad.
Looks like it would be a lot of fun at the drive-in, parked with the rear of the car facing the screen…
Prior to the Envoy being released, an acquaintance at the Studebaker National Museum in South Bend had said that GM engineers had requested copies of blueprints for the Wagonaire…no s**t. The Museum provided them from their expansive Archives collection.
My father had a 64 Wagonaire R2 Daytona. Except for the interior and (Chevy) engine, it was a poorly built, fragile car. I was unlucky enough to inherit it, and hopefully it was junked at some point.
If your Dad’s Wagonaire was a 64 R2, that would have been a Studebaker 289 V8 with the Paxton supercharger. The R2 was a pretty stout powerplant, and would have been a very rare (and fairly fast) car. The R2 engine was the same one that went into the Avanti, and was an upgrade over the unsupercharged R1 (that was still a performance upgrade over the standard 289). The Chevy 283 did not go into these cars until the 1965 model year. The 64 models, even those built after the closure of the South Bend plant, got Stude power through the end of that year. Sorry you had such a bad experience with yours. As for me, sometimes love is irrational. 🙂
I hadn’t noticed before, but the Wagonaire (and maybe other Studebaker station wagons, as well) has a flip-down, rear step bar incorporated into the tailgate. In yet another foreshadowing of things to come, as not that long ago, Ford began offering a very similar step as an option in the tailgates of some of their pickup trucks. AFAIK, it’s sold well enough that it’s still available to this day.
I always wondered why no other manufacturer took this idea and ran with it. Because it was initiated by Studebaker, and no one wanted to be thought of as imitating a dying car company? We owned several of these when I was in my teens. The roof seals always leaked, and our idea of ‘funny’, in a heavy rain, was to put up the hood on our raincoat, wait for the right moment, and stomp the brakes, the collected water in the sliding channels would rush forward, and the placement was perfect to catch the unsuspecting passenger in the back of the neck. Driver got drenched too, but it was worth it. Seriously, the sliding roof was a very useful feature that should have caught on. I’m sure, with some development time and money (sadly in short supply at Studebaker), the poor sealing problem could have been resolved. Of course, the ones we had had moved down the scale to the ‘$100 beater’ class by the time we got them, but everyone had complained about the roofs. Funny how back in the 60s it seemed to take very little time for cars to depreciate to the $100/200 level. It helped being in the midwest, where rust never sleeps, but I can’t imagine a 10 year old Camry being sold for $100. Maybe when you adjust for inflation, it hasn’t changed much?
Even if the Wagonaire’s sliding roof hadn’t leaked, it just wasn’t a very practical idea, regardless of who came up with it. All one need do is check out the dismal sales of the 2003-05 GMC Envoy XUV. I have no doubt that the XUV’s sliding roof didn’t leak, and it would appear that sales were no better than the Wagonaire’s.
I mean, unless you’re regularly hauling refrigerators or tall plants, when do you really need that kind of overhead space in a passenger vehicle where the cargo area is carpeted? Then there’s the whole foul-weather thing. With a truck, the driver/passenger are in separate, sealed compartment. If you’re hauling something in an open Wagonaire or XUV and the weather isn’t pristine, well, people are going to be…uncomfortable.
With that said, I’m still glad Studebaker (and GM) gave it a go. The potential was there, but it just didn’t pan out.
Tall plants are best transported lying down out of the wind. Transplanting is stressful enough for plants without a simulated hurricane to beat them up before they get into the ground.
I’ve always found a lot of styling cues shared by the Wagonaire and Jeep Wagoneer. Were they styled by the same person?
Yes! Brooks Stevens designed both the Jeep Wagoneer and the Studebaker Wagonaire.
It’s hard to imagine an occupation that would actually need this combination. Photographers who needed a high perch were already using panel trucks and microbuses with platforms on top. Contractors who use a ladder need more stability than a passenger car can provide. If you need the open top to carry furniture or big stuff, you’d just get a pickup. If you only need the open top occasionally, you’d borrow or rent a pickup.
Little did I think that I’d get to drop this tidbit on CC: Allan Jones was great as Ravenal in the 1936 film of Show Boat.
Several of the Wagonaires rear ends in the ads are sagging. Not a good look. Did anyone proof these ads?
I always thought that the Chevy Avalanche with the pass thru from the bed into the cab was an equally bad idea. Long load items might be dirty or wet, the a/c and heat would be sucked out, and it would seem that dust and dirt would get in. I really don’t know how the system works. Maybe someone with experience with the vehicle could chime in.
Nearly all pictures of the Avalanche’s midgate show it with the tailgate open and the bed cover pieces removed, but it was entirely possible to use the midgate while keeping the bed closed and covered, essentially making a massive trunk accessible from inside. But you’d still have to deal with noise.
One of my earliest childhood memories is of watching a TV game show (I think it might have been “Let’s Make a Deal!”) on my family’s black-and-white Admiral TV set in about 1963 or so, and the big prize was a Studebaker station wagon.
I think the appearance and failure of the similar sliding roof on the GMC Envoy XUV shows that even if the Wagonaire had been a big three product it would have been a slow selling niche model. As an aside to the advertising. Matchbox made a diecast model with a working roof panel, that fascinated me as a 4 year old.
Re: the Chevy Avalanche and its mid gate, I have only seen one person using it, when my neighbor spent the summer building a patio cover and partially residing his house. Since he was hauling clean material in mild weather it worked fine and he could then return the Avalanche to its normal duties towing his camper.
I always thought the sliding roof was an idea nobody asked for, maybe it was useful for hauling large potted plants or small trees but a pickup would have served the purpose just as well. I suppose at this time Studebaker was getting desperate for ideas and throwing stuff against the wall and see what stuck. A sunroof would have seemed like a better idea.