Classic film shows human side of Studebaker’s end

(UPDATED FROM 1/29/2021)

Documentary films contribute to automotive history in a different way than words on a page (either paper or electronic). In general, film can capture much better the human elements of a situation, such as through interviews, historical video footage and music.

The downside of film is that even a lengthy documentary doesn’t contain as much information as a book. This inevitably means more superficial analysis. In addition, automotive films are usually produced by people who are not specialists in the industry, which can result in fact errors that undercut a documentary’s credibility.

The 1983 film, Studebaker: Less Than They Promised, fits those strengths and weaknesses pretty well despite receiving a prestigious Peabody Award. Producers Scott Craig and Michael Beatty were strongest in showing the human impacts of Studebaker’s closure of its South Bend, Indiana plant in 1963. However, their analysis of what killed the automaker was superficial and suffered from niggling fact errors.

Film tracks what happened to a Studebaker family

Less Than They Promised focused on one family, the Bokons, who had appeared in a 1950s Studebaker film that emphasized how the corporation treated its employees like an extended family. The Bokons were reunited to discuss how their lives had changed since they were originally filmed — and Studebaker’s main plant closed.

Perhaps the most poignant moment in the film was when it noted that all of the Bokons seated at the above table had lost their pensions. One family member talked about how he would have retired by now if he had received a Studebaker pension because he had “20-some years” with the company. Instead, he had to start over.

Less Than They Promised juxtaposed these personal stories with corporate documents that reportedly showed that the board of directors “discussed the possibility that, if they continued making cars and trucks in South Bend, they would have to put millions of dollars in the pension fund. Obviously, if they did not, the money could be used in other corporate divisions.”

This is illustrative of why the film’s producers chose the title, Less Than They Promised. The core premise of the film was that Studebaker violated a principle that the company had espoused over its long history — to give “more than they promised.”

An even-handed take on Studebaker’s demise

The film attempted to offer an even-handed analysis of why Studebaker died. The usual factors were mentioned, such as a weak dealer network, aging products, inadequate marketing and quality issues. Less Than They Promised also waded into the most contentious factor: labor-management relations.

The film offered counterpoints to arguments that Studebaker employees didn’t work hard and were not committed to its products. However, Less Than They Promised also interviewed a labor leader who stated that workers went on strike in 1962 because “we were unsure of what (management’s) agenda really was and it almost became a matter of preserving honor.” And when asked whether Studebaker’s union was too strong, the labor leader’s response was, “many times my own belief is that a union is as strong as the management is weak.”

Also see ‘Might Studebaker have survived if Sherwood Egbert had stayed healthy?’

The film concludes by arguing that the factors which led to Studebaker’s death were “chickens that later came home to roost” for its larger American competition. “It was as if the Big Three learned absolutely nothing from Studebaker’s mistakes.”

Interspersed throughout the film is historical video footage such as television commercials and a Studebaker film portraying the company’s history. This part of Less Than They Promised is a particularly valuable contribution to Studebaker history because the producers reportedly sifted through a vast archive of videos.

Fact errors undercut film’s value as historical record

Fact errors begin showing up in the second scene, which was supposed to be from 1962 but was actually a film clip of a man driving a 1963 Lark convertible.

Less Than They Promised then suggested that most Americans thought that Studebaker was doing pretty well in 1962. The evidence included that “the company had almost one fifth of the independent car business” — a data point which is neither very flattering nor meaningful. The film then pointed to how only one year later the South Bend plant was shut down. This implied a more rapid fall from public grace than what actually happened. The relatively good sales of 1962 were a respite from the previous year, when the company’s automotive operations were in a tailspin not unlike 1958 . . . or 1956 or 1954.

Also see ‘1959 Studebaker: Throwing the baby out with the bath water’

A quick overview of Studebaker’s history was then presented. For example, a merger with Packard was described as an “unmitigated disaster” because the “Packards were fraught with quality problems and they were ugly.” Yes, they had quality issues, but I would flatly disagree that the Packards looked bad. They were easily the most normal-looking cars of any American independent brand in 1955-56 — including Studebaker.

When discussing the botched launch of the Avanti in 1963, Less Than They Promised stated that “there were (still) no Avanti’s and the Lark was failing. Only this car, the Hawk, was selling but it couldn’t carry the company.”

Uh, no — Hawk production in 1963 plunged 50 percent to under 5,000 units. Meanwhile, the Lark’s output fell only 19 percent to roughly 75,000 units. The problem was that overall Studebaker production was now well below the company’s breakeven point of upwards of 100,000 units (Ebert, 2013).

Discussion of worker pension losses too vague

Less Than They Promised was also rather vague about why a Bokon family member who worked “20-some years” for Studebaker was ineligible for a pension. A scholarly article by law professor James A. Wooten offered more specifics:

On October 15, 1964, after several months of negotiations, the company and Local 5 executed an agreement that terminated the (pension) plan along the lines set out in the 1961 collective-bargaining agreement. The first three classes of beneficiaries — retirees, retirement-eligible employees over sixty-five, and retirement-eligible employees over sixty — received their full pension. Vested employees less than sixty years of age, a few of whom had forty years of service with the firm, received a lump-sum payment worth about 15% of the value of their pension. Employees whose benefit accruals had not vested including all employees under age forty-got nothing. (2001, p. 731)

This agreement was tilted in favor of older workers. As Geeber notes in a comment below, someone who joined Studebaker at age 18 and had worked for the corporation for 20 years when the South Bend plant closed would not have been eligible for a pension because they had not yet reached 40 years of age. The film could have explained this with a fairly simple graphic, but perhaps producers assumed that getting into labor-contract technicalities would have interrupted the narrative flow of the story.

Also see ‘1966-70 Studebaker: Putting lipstick on a pig?’

All in all, Craig and Beatty made an important contribution to American automotive history by focusing on the experience of rank-and-file employees — who arguably don’t get the attention they deserve in the field’s literature. This is but one reason why the Peabody Awards (1983) quite rightly concluded that this film was “an exceptionally well-done effort.” My only caveat is to view Less Than They Promised more as a mood piece rather than a definitive historical record of Studebaker’s last years.

NOTES:

This is an updated version of a story that was originally posted Sep. 1, 2019 and updated on Jan. 29, 2021. Production figures are from Gunnell (2002). The film is related to a book with the same title, which was written by Michael Beatty (1984). This book represented the first effort to reinterpret “the Studebaker tradition in terms of betrayal and managerial incompetence,” noted Critchlow (1996, p. 187).

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RE:SOURCES

• Beatty, Michael (1983. Less Than They Promised. Distributors.
• Beatty, Michael and Scott Craig; 1983. Less Than They Promised. Scott Craig Productions Inc. Posted on YouTube Oct. 14, 2019 by Damian Penny.
• Critchlow, Donald T.; 1996. Studebaker: The Life and Death of an American Corporation. Indiana University Press, Indianapolis, IN.
• Ebert, Robert R.; 2013. Champion of the Lark: Harold Churchill and the Presidency of Studebaker-Packard, 1956-1961. McFarland & Company, London.
• Gunnell, John; 2002. Standard Catalog of American Cars, 1946-1975. Revised Fourth Ed. Krause Publications, Iola, WI.
• Peabody Awards; 1983. “Studebaker: Less Than They Promised.”
• Ward, James A.; 1995. The Fall of the Packard Motor Car Company. Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA.
• Wooten, James A.; 2001. “‘The Most Glorious Story of Failure in the Business’: The Studebaker-Packard Corporation and the Origins of ERISA.” Digital Commons@University of Buffalo Law School. Spring issue: pp. 683-739.

ADVERTISING & BROCHURES:

• oldcaradvertising.com: Packard (1955)
• oldcarbrochures.org: Studebaker (1955)