Autos: Final Departure

Studebaker, a 64-year-old name in the automotive world, is going out of the auto business.

In the U.S. car industry, where the big get bigger and the small tend to get squeezed out, the Studebaker Corp. in 1963 tried a brave departure. Bathed in $80 million of red ink after eight years of declining sales and expensive overhead at its antiquated South Bend plants, it moved assembly lines across the border to a more efficient subsidiary in Hamilton, Ontario. In its U.S. operation, the company needed to sell 115,000 cars a year to break even, was falling short of the mark....