For the majority of my life until I left for college I lived in South Bend, Indiana and I still consider it my hometown. And in South Bend, you live in the long shadow of two things--Notre Dame University and the ghost of Studebaker. If you drove around much in downtown South Bend, or if you worked there, Studebaker's shadow was a literal thing; the rotting hulks of their factory buildings were a constant reminder of long-gone glory days. It wasn't as if there weren't plans floated over the years to do something with those buildings, or tear them down, but somehow they just never quite came to anything.
People my age (36) and older, and auto enthusiasts, will remember that it wasn't always the "Big Three" in the U.S. auto industry. GM, Ford and Chrysler are merely the consolidated remnants of any number of companies. I fondly remember American Motors, for instance. My mother drove a 1970 AMC Hornet that lasted over 300,000 miles (exactly how, I will never know) and my dad mourned the loss of his '74 Matador for years after it was totaled by a drunk driver who ran into it while it was parked on the street.
I have been thinking a lot about Studebaker and AMC the last few days. Especially Studebaker. The company started out making wagons, and made it's first car, an electric model, in 1902. By 1920 they'd moved their manufacturing operations to South Bend and began turning out cars noted for their unique look and lines. But by the late '50s the company was bleeding money. A merger with Packard and a popular compact model, the Lark, bought the company a few years but in December 1963 Studebaker shut down the South Bend plant. Two years after that it ceased making cars altogether. To be sure, small pieces lived on. In South Bend, until the mid-80s, about 100-odd people continued to make Avantis, and AM General, originally a division of Studebaker, made vehicles for the U.S. military, most famously the Hummer.
Even so, South Bend began its slow decline with Studebaker's collapse. Downtown died, people fled. From a major city with a population of over 137,000 according to the 1960 census, the official population in 2000 was just over 107,000, and that was an increase from when I lived there in the '80s and '90s. South Bend has recovered from the loss of its manufacturing base, but it was a long, slow and incomplete recovery.
This, it seems, is what the anti-bailout senators, led by Corker, DeMint and McConnell, want to condemn large swaths of the American Midwest to, not to mention plants in their own states in Bowling Green, KY and Spring Hill, TN. I have nothing against the foreign companies building cars in these states. One of them, BMW, helps pay bills in my household by virtue of being an advertising client of the company my wife works for as a proof reader. I also have nothing against giving GM and Chrysler (remember, Ford is not asking for money at this time) giant strings with any government aid. But it should not be about busting the UAW. After all, how can the southern Republicans credibly ask the unions to cut their pay and benefits even more than they already have when they are not requiring auto executive to cut their pay down to a level comparable to Japanese executives, who make about 11 times more than their least-paid employees.
I think, though, if the "wrecking crew" want to persist in their hard line, the should be forced to see what the consequences of their actions are likely to be--at a minimum. Because remember, Studebaker left South Bend at a time of national economic prosperity, so the city's 40+ years in the economic wilderness is probably a best-case scenario. Evan Bayh, or better yet Governor Mitch Daniels, should invite McConnell, Corker, DeMint et al. to tour the crumbling factories and see the bittersweet celebration of past glory at the Studebaker Museum and see, exactly, what lays in store when the sheen of a narrow partisan "victory" fades and what is then left behind.
(See the 1963 Lark Daytona)
UPDATE: Apparently, Studebaker Motor Company may have a second life. Feeling nostalgic after writing this diary and wanting to see more photos of Studebakers, I stumbled across...The Official Studebaker Motor Company Website. This new company, now HQ'd in Colorado, is hoping to introduce a line of motor scooters and then move into producing passenger vehicles--beginning with a new version of the Lark and then reviving venerable models such as the Hawk, President and Champion as a new generation of green autos. We'll see what happens; hopefully they will be repeat and improve on Tesla's early success and not Zap's.