robadr1 uploaded to the Cohort a vintage review by UK’s Autocar of the new 1939 Studebaker Commander saloon (sedan). It’s a rather fascinating time capsule, and it’s pretty obvious that Autocar was somewhat ahead of the times in their testing regime. The one thing that really stuck out for me was the 3.5 turns lock-to-lock for the steering wheel. By the late ’50s, that was some 6 turns in a Studebaker. What happened?
“the steering is firm, and noticeably lower geared than has been general praise on American cars formerly…the steering gives accurate control at high speeds as well as low, and is light enough for manoeuvring, though inevitably not quite as light as a low geared mechanism”. Did the bigger balloon tires require lower geared steering? Or just to make it easier for parking? Come to think, I do now remember the steering on the 1936 Plymouth I drove was similarly quick and a bit heavy. But I prefer that to the opposite.
For Christmas, 1967 I received a 12 month subscription to Road & Track magazine starting with the January 1968 issue, from my parents (I was 11). My aunt also got me a car magazine subscription, and not to be outdone, got me a subscription to Autocar, for 3 years! Autocar was a weekly, so even with lengthy over-the-ocean shipping delays (the first issue didn’t arrive till March or April 1968) Autocar often beat R&T with news and road tests. Road & Track’s testing was perhaps the most quantitative and objective of the US magazine’s, but even at that young age I could tell that Autocar took things pretty seriously too.
I also became fluent in British English language and spelling, but I don’t recall the term “automatic mixture strangling” as used in this Studebaker test. I think by 1968 the word choke was used on both sides of the pond. Thanks for finding this!
I think one factor in the steering is the engine location. Before 1949 most cars had the engine well behind the front axle, giving more lever advantage to the front wheels, and placing less of the weight on them. My ’50 Willys truck had the engine behind the wheels and a short steering ratio, without needing major muscle. Go-kart steering.
Undoubtedly that’s a factor. As well as cars getting heavier overall.
Nailed it. Ride quality got better when the back seat passengers didn’t have to ride over the back axle, but steering certainly got heavier when other cars caught up with the Airflow.
RHD so Built in the firm’s Canadian plant in Hamilton, Ontario to avoid import tax on non Commonwealth cars.
“a 12 volt installation”? No wonder it needed an anti-dazzle switch.
I thought American cars were 6 volts until about 1956.
From other vintage road tests I’ve seen, it appears American cars were changed to 12 volts for the British market, since that was standard there. Dodge had used 12 volts until Chrysler took them over so it wasn’t unheard of even in the US.
The shift pattern with the gear lever on the left of the steering wheel is fascinating. Reverse was up and away instead of up and in. In third gear, the lever would be kind of close to the driver’s knee, I would think.
For those who may be interested in going further down the rabbit hole, there’s an excellent colour film on YouTube of a journey on the ‘Great North Road’, north from London in August 1939. As a North American I couldn’t identify a single car but it’s fascinating watching, both for the vehicles and general views.
How on earth did you get your hands on such an old road-test ? I read Autocar for 50 years from early 1959, and only once or twice did they ever re-print a pre-war test – I remember reading a test of the 1935 Ford ‘Y’- type.
Love the video, so many black cars. A long road trip took you through all the towns on the way – no bypasses. Ireland was the same until relatively recently.
eBay. I picked up an old Autocar issue from a second hand store about 20 years ago, and liked the look and content. So for the next 5 or 6 years I was picking up issues that looked interesting on eBay. I have 30 or 40 of them, mostly 50’s & early 60’s, but a few earlier ones.
I’m pretty sure the car with twin back windows seen parked along the way is a Buick, though again, probably Canadian built. The barrage baloon seen overhead early on is a portent of things to come.
I’d say the black car arriving at the stoplight beside the buses at 0:28 looks like a Buick, should be new at the time. If it is, should be a Canadian McLaughlin like you say
I was feeling Buick also. There was no shoulder on the road and it wasn’t even close to the curb.
I lived near Biggleswade in the 80s and it still hasn’t changed much. All towns were bypassed by the late 60s . A section with 12 Lanes runs from St Neots to North London today. Still the longest road in the UK running from Marble Arch, London to Edinburgh.
I was wondering what it was. It did look North American to me (a little larger and sleeker than typical British cars of the time), but I find it really challenging to identify cars of that age through Google.
All my motor trade magazines are on loan/storage with my VW nutter friend they are English origin as is he and he is fascinated with them but the do feature road tests of then new cars from the early 50s not as early as this Stude though, quite an advanced car for its time too, 12 volts, hill holder, overdrive, all appear to be standard features.
As shown in this report and by the many trucks Studebaker made during WWII, the company was very competitive for a long time. It would be interesting to know what went wrong following the war.
GM outspent them massively to attract increasingly-frivolous consumers. Once it was assumed that American cars were competent and durable, Studebaker and Packard became fashion victims. GM could afford to retool their styling every year and their mechanical components every other year. Companies smaller than Chrysler couldn’t even appear to be as progressive in luring style-over-substance buyers.
It’s also true that GM and Chrysler were making technological progress in the two decades after WWII. Would you have bought a flat-head Lark over a slant-six Valiant in 1960, or an flathead-eight-powered 1954 Packard over a hemi Imperial?
I remember when I bought my Subaru Forester there was mention of the hill-holder feature having started with (or at least popularized by) Studebaker.
This must have been a demoralizing review for its readers. This Studebaker basically performed like a British family car of three decades later while having more room than they would ever be permitted to buy. It might have been a car of somewhat fringe appeal in the US, but it was a Rolls-Royce without a hand-rubbed lacquer finish that any American with a high school diploma could own while working-class Brits could only admire it with their noses pressed to the showroom window.
My mom grew up in Britain (born in 1923,) . Years ago she told me the most surprising thing about American servicemen stationed there in WWII is that they all had cars back home in the States. In Britain, only the wealthy or people who traveled for a living owned cars.
Thirty years on, a family Ford Escort with the 1100 Kent engine wouldn’t do much over 80mph, and not hugely slower than 23 secs to 60 (and no overdrive!), though 35 mpg instead of 20. This Stude was indeed a lux wonder in ’39 England, and there’d have been not few expensive over-bodied swish brands that would be slower than this.
That forward-visibility drawing/photograph is interesting and useful. I wonder how they made that? I wouldn’t mind a similar feature in road tests of modern crossovers.
A car of considerable competence, what with 60-70mph cruising and fan-assisted heat and cooling. And brakes that could be applied at high speed, too!!
It is a bit frustrating that the price is not mentioned, as I can only imagine it was not cheap yet also not the price of an upper-class brand from England either.
As in this country, a Stude was a bit of an exotic, perceived to be up the scale from a Ford or Chev, which themselves were above the English tiddlers some could afford.
Driving needs were much different in England of the time, and bunch of the capabilities of this car weren’t a priority, whereas here, we had US needs and distances largely confined to English machines.
The review is demurely polite. I’d hazard a guess that the reversed RHD gearchange is awful, and the driving position worse.
As I understand the English tax system of the day, was there not a tax on engine displacement? That was a huge engine by English standards, so would likely have been quite expensive to own even beyond the initial purchase. There was the President 8 which would have improved performance even more, but surely would have been even more expensive for that upper-class Englishman.
A strange system based on the bore (leading to a lot of long-stroke Englishers for years) and the HP calculated by some method from that and the tax from that. Hence the “27” HP Stude, more realistically perhaps 90 or more, at a guess.
The price is actually there, a mistake I made which I tried but failed to amend, 398 pounds. Not a cheap car.
Not on displacement exactly; see Taxable Horsepower. It’s [Bore × Bore × cylinder count] ÷ 2.5
Searching (it took some doing!) on the web reveals engine specs here: 90 BHP, 26.3 “rated” (taxable) horsepower.
The price is shown at the top of the spec sheet – £398, plus £20 5s. tax (£20.25 in decimal terms). The exchange rate at the time was about $4.33 to the £, making the price about US$1725 plus tax.
The low tax pre-war rate is what surprised me. After the war, the purchase tax on cars in Britain went to 50% and stayed there for about 15 years. Domestic consumption was throttled, the need to export being dire.
I would have loved to have been around then to understand why these were not more popular than they were. They were as attractive as anything built, professionally styled under the eye of Raymond Loewy. They were also mechanically sturdy and modern.
I have long wondered if the restricted body style choices hurt their popularity – there were no convertibles. The convertibles were not big sellers but they tended to be chosen by the fashionable, giving the whole line a boost. Then again, even then the big 3 (big 2, really) were innovating with style and features and had first-rate dealer networks.
There definitely was a Big 3 in this period, not a Big 2. From the mid 30s to the mid 50s, Ford Motor Company and Chrysler Corporation sold comparable numbers of cars. There were several years when Chrysler sold more cars than Ford, and years when Plymouth and Dodge combined to significantly outsell the Ford brand.
Studebaker had a smaller dealer body and a less well known name. It was essentially for folks who wanted to be different.
The Champion was significantly more expensive than a comparable Ford Standard.
I loved reading this vintage article when robadr first posted it, and I’m glad to see it here again — it’s great from so many different standpoints.
In an odd version of the CC Effect, I’m sitting here on my front porch reading and writing, and just about 20 minutes ago I looked up and a saw Studebaker Hawk drive by. Yes, somewhat removed from the Commander, but when on earth was last time I saw a Studebaker randomly drive down a street? And I’ve never seen it around here before either. Quite a treat… just like this Autocar test.
Interersting to read the reference to the state of the Brooklands track – the circuit had really started to disintegrate by 1938.