This is the single greatest honor in the motor vehicle industry, intended to honor a career and/or lifetime achievement. To become a "Hall of Famer" the nominee must be either retired or deceased. Recipients must have significantly impacted the development of the automobile or the motor vehicle industry. Typically, four to eight individuals are inducted each year.
John Mohler Studebaker was born in 1833, the third of five sons. The older two brothers, Henry and Clement, opened a blacksmith shop in South Bend, Indiana, in 1852. The name of the company: H&C Studebaker. The first day they shoed a horse in 30 minutes and the customer paid them 25 cents. Days went by without another customer.
A few weeks later, a customer came to the shop and asked the brothers to build him a wagon. This they did, in seven days, and earned $175. It was constructed of oak, with iron hinges and wheels made of hickory. In an era when most wagons were painted black, the boys painted theirs red and green – and on the sides, painted in large yellow letters, the name “STUDEBAKER.” Thus was the first of many millions of vehicles to carry the Studebaker name.
While Henry and Clem were building their wagon business, younger brother John Mohler Studebaker, now nineteen, was suffering from wanderlust. Times were hard in South Bend, as they were throughout the Midwest, in the years leading up to the Civil War, and John Mohler was lured by the promise of wealth digging for gold in California.
In five years living in a tough, lawless town, Studebaker found wealth in California, not from gold, but by building wheelbarrows for the golddiggers. He soon came to be known as “Wheelbarrow Johnny.”
In 1858, John Mohler returned to South Bend with $8,000 in cash and gold in his pocket. The H&C Studebaker Co. had experienced some, but not great, success during John Mohler’s absence, and the company desperately needed a capital infusion to buy much needed equipment. Oldest brother Henry, now tired of wagon making, longed to return to farming. Upon John Mohler’s return, he bought out his older brother and sank the remaining money into the company.
A few years later, with oldest brother Henry gone and younger brother Peter now with company, the name of the firm was changed, simply, to “Studebaker Brothers.” During this period, the company was experiencing huge growth due to government contracts to build wagons for the U.S. Army.
For the rest of the 19th Century, Studebaker became the world’s largest carriage maker, most notably rivaled by the Durant-Dort Carriage Co. of Flint, Michigan, the precursor to General Motors.
By 1900, it was becoming increasingly clear that the horseless carriage was more than just a passing fad. In 1901, Clem Studebaker passed away. Of the five Studebaker brothers, only John Mohler remained, and he was 68. That same year, there was a Motor Show in Chicago, which was not far from South Bend, and John Mohler attended, knowing full well that it represented the future of the Studebaker company.
But while Studebaker realized the automobile was the future, he thought that it was electric cars, not gasoline, that would get him there.
In just one year, Studebaker had designed and engineered an electric vehicle, with five different body styles, and built 20 of them the first year. One of them was kept by John Mohler, who used it to drive around his factory.
By 1908, Studebaker carriages still outsold Studebaker automobiles, but the automobile side of the business was growing faster and was far more profitable. That same year, Studebaker had learned of a new company being formed in Detroit, the Everitt-Metzger-Flanders Company, or E-M-F. Walter Flanders had just left the employ of Henry Ford and took with him a great deal of know-how. Impressed, Studebaker purchased a third of the E-M-F stock and entered into a distribution agreement selling Flanders automobiles through Studebaker’s vast sales network of over a thousand dealers.
The next year, Studebaker had sold 9.5 million dollars worth of automobiles that they had only distributed but did not build. The future in automobiles was now clear, and Studebaker bought up the remaining two-thirds of E-M-F stock. John Studebaker now owned and controlled his own automobile company!
In 1911, the company discontinued selling electric cars and became the Studebaker Corporation, almost 60 years after brothers Henry and Clem opened their shop to shoe horses.
Despite his great, new-found success in the auto business, John Mohler was still reluctant to let go of carriages altogether.
“The automobile,” he said, “has come to stay. But when a man has no business, it is a rather expensive luxury, and I would advise no man, be he farmer or merchant, to buy one until he has sufficient income to keep it up. A horse and buggy will afford a great deal of enjoyment …”
John Mohler Studebaker passed away in 1917 at the age of 83, and was still serving as the company’s Honorary President. He was a man born well before the Civil War, and lived to see his company firmly entrenched in the modern world.
Upon his death, the headline in the South Bend Saturday Tribune summed up his life:
“DEATH CLAIMS LAST OF FIVE BIG BROTHERS
J.M. STUDEBAKER PASSES AWAY IN MIDST OF FAMILY.
END WAS VERY PEACEFUL.
MANUFACTURER AND PHILANTHROPIST,
CONSCIOUS TO THE LAST, DISCUSSES BUSINESS ALMOST UP TO FINAL HOUR.”
