How Studebaker Automobiles Are 
A Heart-to-Heart Story. No. 1 
B ECAUSE farmers are acquainted 
with machinery, we have decided 
upon an entirely new kind of farm 
paper advertising. 
We shall run a series of articles in 
28 of the best farm papers in the United 
States reaching upwards of 2,700,000 
farmer subscribers. How many readers 
that will mean you can judge better than 
we. 
The first and greatest problem of 
all automobile manufacture is simply 
this: How to produce the best car for 
a low price. 
Now there is just one way known 
to man by which this question can be 
answered, and that is: By building so 
large a number of cars that the manu¬ 
facturer can afford the machinery neces¬ 
sary to build cars in the best manner 
possible. 
This is what is known as modern 
Quantity and Quality Production. 
Let us stop here a moment and make 
it clear. "Most manufacturers of auto¬ 
mobiles are “assemblers,” not real manu¬ 
facturers. They buy a motor from one 
parts manufacturer, a transmission from 
another, a rear axle from another and 
then put the parts together to make a 
car. Naturally they have to pay a good 
profit to the parts manufacturers and 
then resell to the buyer at another profit. 
When they are done they may have pro¬ 
duced a pretty good car, but—and this 
is the point—it is bound to cost the 
buyer several hundred dollars more than 
it would cost if the manufacturer made 
the whole car himself. 
Remember two things here: 
One: No matter what price you pay 
you never get more than you pay for. 
Two : Every high priced car and every 
assembled car could be sold at from 
three-quarters to three-fifths of its pres¬ 
ent price if the manufacturer really 
made all his own car and if that car 
were built in quantities upwards of 
20,000 cars annually. 
This brings us to the Studebaker 
method: 
We manufacture Studebaker auto¬ 
mobiles from top to tread in our own 
factories, which cover 40 acres of floor 
space. And we are building 50,000 cars 
this year. 
{The only exceptions to our own 
manufacture arc tires, lamps, magneto 
and one or tzvo similar parts, which 
no automobile manufacturer ought to 
build.) 
For these two reasons, and these 
alone, we are able to sell cars at 
$885.00, $1290.00 and $1550.00 which 
cannot be equalled by other cars at 
an average of $500.00 higher price. 
We start with the raw material, 
chiefly bar steel and pig iron. 
This raw material begins its long 
journey of many processes and many 
weeks of time towards the finished car, 
through three or four main opening 
channels in our factory. 
1. The Forge Shop. Forty great 
hammers working on white hot' steel. 
2. The Foundry. A huge building 
where molten pig iron is poured into 
moulds almost as carefully constructed 
as for precious metal work. 
3. The Steel Stamping Mill. Huge 
presses take steel plates of different 
gauge thickness and under many tons 
pressure stamp them into form. 
4. The Heat Treating Plant. Forty 
deep ovens at glowing heat take every 
vital steel part in Studebaker cars and in 
Forging a Front Axle in 4,000 lb. Drop Forge 
from three to six separate treatments 
make it hard and tough. 
No man, least of all a farmer who is 
accustomed to tilling the soil and get¬ 
ting back to first principles, can stand 
before these immense glowing gateways 
of Studebaker manufacture and not be 
stirred with the thought that here things 
are genuine and what they seem. Who 
can see a four-ton drop-forge hammer 
seize a hot square bar of steel and 
fashion it into form with blows now 
gentle, now awe-inspiring, without feel¬ 
ing the power and skill which control 
such forces. 
Yet first we must go one step back 
of this to a quiet place of study and 
diligent experiment—our laboratories. 
Here are highly trained specialists 
working over a microscope or adjusting 
a spring-testing machine, or watching a 
liquid change color in the chemical 
laboratories. It is such a scene as you 
would witness in the best universities, 
aiM no university has better equipment. 
Yet the word of these men ,vho are 
so far removed from the din of the 
forge shop and stamping mill make the 
law of our factories. 
What material we shall use they 
specify. 
Our laboratory experts tell the Pitts¬ 
burg steel mills what kinds of iron and 
steel we will use for the different parts 
and the mills make the steel and iron 
as we specify. 
But we go further, and will not ac¬ 
cept a single shipment until the labora¬ 
tories have tested it and found that it 
is in accordance with our formulas. 
Pouring Molten Iron in Studebaker Foundry 
In other words, our laboratories tell 
us to the thousandth part of one per 
cent, what our steel is made of and 
what it will do under any given condi¬ 
tions. 
Let us now turn for a moment and 
speak of steels themselves. 
You have heard and read often of 
Krupp, chrome, nickel, vanadium, man¬ 
ganese and other kinds of steel alloys. 
You have been told that this or that 
steel is “specially heat treated.” Unless 
you were an expert these terms have 
been meaningless—even if you were an 
expert you wouldn’t be real sure just 
which steel was best suited for each 
particular part unless you knew the 
amount and kind of strain that each 
particular part is subjected to. 
But when the Studebaker engineers 
design a car they know by mathematics 
the “strains and stresses” to which each 
part is to be subjected, just as a bridge- 
builder knows what strains or stresses 
will fall upon each part of his structure. 
The automobile engineer, however, is 
called upon not only to provide a part 
strong enough, but also to provide it 
light and compact enough to simplify 
design and keep the weight of his car 
down. 
Remember this next time you ask a 
salesman the weight of his car and re¬ 
member also that in the Studebaker fac¬ 
tories the engineer works with the sci¬ 
entist. 
Now we have already spoken of heat 
treating, and as heat treating finally 
determines the quality of all steels, we 
shall describe it further: 
Remember that heat treating means 
to steel about what baking does to 
bread. To say “this steel is heat 
treated” is a good deal like saving 
“this bread is baked.” But just as 
other things are important about bread, 
so also with steel. The kind of stuff 
in it, the way it is baked, the tempera¬ 
ture, the oven, the brown it gets on 
the crust, all these things are important 
in steel as well as in bread. 
The scientists in Studebaker labora¬ 
tories are specialized experts in steel. 
They know steel as a good baker knows 
h 
his bread. The baker strives to get a 
fine, even, white grain to the inside of 
his loaf; the steel expert, under a mi¬ 
croscope, which magnifies 1,000 diame¬ 
ters, studies the grain of the steel. He 
watches the effects of great pressures 
exerted at high temperatures or the 
changes in structure brought about by 
“tempering.” 
In order to get just the right “tem¬ 
per” he chills the glowing metals in oil, 
water or brine as may best give him 
the desired result. 
By varying the heat treating accord¬ 
ing to temperature and using the right 
kind of “tempering” he adds to or di¬ 
minishes the amount of carbon, chro¬ 
mium, nickel or other materials in the 
steel by precisely the right amount for 
a gear, a crank shaft, an axle or spring. 
The springs, for example, are “tem¬ 
pered” in oil, and because this is a 
delicate process it takes from three to 
six operations. 
Do you begin to see hov/ thorough 
Studebaker manufacture is? 
Steel is usually hard or soft, accord¬ 
ing to the amount of carbon in it. 
Nickel makes it very tough and highly 
resistant to twisting strain. Chromium 
adds both to toughness and hardness. 
Supposing, then, we are making an 
axle shaft which must turn its rear 
wheel over 30,000 to 100,000 miles of 
road in its day. It must travel a long 
road which knows many bumps, ter¬ 
rific jars, strains in mud, sand and 
steep grades, and it must not break. 
For this shaft we take the tough, re¬ 
sistant nickel steel and heat-treat it 
until it just suits the purpose. 
Or we may be studying a driving 
gear. This must be glass-hard to re¬ 
sist wear. It dare not be brittle or the 
teeth would fly into a thousand chips. 
By proper heat treatments we provide 
for all this. 
Then there is the steering knuckle, 
which must not fail, and a thousand 
other parts, each of which will be sub¬ 
jected to a different kind of wear or 
strain and each of which must be un¬ 
failing in the performance of its task. 
So every Studebaker part is carefully 
studied, designed right and manufac¬ 
tured as carefully as if on it alone 
hung the honor of the Studebaker or¬ 
ganization. 
And now that the Studebaker labora¬ 
tory experts have told us what steels j 
shall be used at every point in the car, 
suppose we turn again to those three 
main channels through which the steel 
is admitted to Studebaker manufacture. 
First the drop-forging. A drop-forge 
is really the old blacksmith’s forge 
grown to gigantic size with hammers 
of thousands of pounds weight. The 
steel comes in a long bar, which is first 
put in a giant shears that clip it off as 
neatly as the housewife snips her 
thread. 
The bar is heated glowing hot and if 
it is to be a crank shaft, for example, 
the first forge drives it into the mere 
rough form of the finished piece. Let | 
no one think this is a little thing, for 
the pounding produces an indescribable 
roar and the earth all around is shaken. 
The partly formed shaft is then 
heated once more and another hammer 
takes its turn. The particles of white- 
hot steel are driven together as closely 
as particles of glass in a piece of crys¬ 
tal. Then a third forge takes up the 
work and the steel takes more and more 
definitely the shape it will finally bear. 
Yet there are 24 operations still to 
come on this piece before it is finished. 
Made 
After the forging the shaft is stacked 
away for six weeks to age and let the 
particles of - steel shrink and adjust 
themselves to the tremendous pounding 
they have received in the forge. 
Later it is rough ground and then 
machined several times and always by 
Studebaker workmen in Studebaker 
shops—-until it is close to its final shape 
and size. 
Then it is straightened, trued, in¬ 
spected and made ready for the grind¬ 
ing which begins to give it the velvet 
smoothness of the finished shaft. 
Right here it is again heat treated, 
baked for hours and pure carbon lit¬ 
erally roasted into the surface of it, 
and when it comes out the surface is a 
high carbon steel, very hard, and so fine 
grained that it will wear glass smooth 
on its bearing surface. 
Again it is heat treated to bring out 
the true temper of its nickel steel core, 
which must be tougher than the side of 
a battleship. 
Even now nearly a dozen operations 
remain before it is ready. 
These consist in grinding, truing, 
straightening and inspecting. 
The truing of the shaft to balance 
is almost as delicate an operation as 
the truing of a balance wheel of a 
watch. It is accomplished by placing 
the shaft on ball-bearing castors with 
knife edges and allowing it to swing 
free. If any part of the shaft is heavier 
than another it turns to the lowest 
point. This heavy part is ground away 
until at last it is finished true and 
even, and when placed on the castors 
will center without movement at any 
Thus does the Studebaker Corpora¬ 
tion take the most minute care that 
every part in Studebaker cars is true 
and right. We balance crank shafts to 
avoid vibration; we straighten and true 
cam shafts to insure correct timing of 
the valves within one one-hundredth of 
a second, and every part of Studebaker 
cars bear the same intense scrutiny and 
skillful watchfulness. Better cars can¬ 
not be built. 
Yet such are the economies of our 
immense and thorough-going equip¬ 
ment that Studebaker automobiles are 
far and away the biggest values the 
world has ever seen. 
In the next issue this heart-to-heart 
Studebaker story will be continued in 
the same way. going further into the 
manufacture of Studebaker cars. We 
hope you will be looking for it. 
The limits of space have not permitted 
us to go into many other interesting points 
of iron casting, steel stamping, etc., but 
we have told much more about these 
things in what we call the Studebaker 
Proof Book—a book designed to prove the 
quality of the Studebaker cars. Whatever 
your automobile preference, you ought to 
have this book. It is free—send for it on 
the coupon below. 
THREE GREAT CARS 
Studebaker “25” Touring Car, $885 
5 passenger—Qas starter 
Studebaker “35” Touring Car, $1290 
• 6 passenger—electric lights, electric 
self-starter 
Studebaker “Six” Touring Car, $1550 
6 passenger—electric lights, electric 
self-starter 
All prices; completely equipped f. o. b. Detroit 
J 
The Studebaker 
Corporation, 
Detroit, ^ 
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