1950 Studebaker Commander Land Cruiser 🇺🇸

Controversial design is nothing new in the automobile industry. The Studebaker spinner nose arrived in showrooms for the 1950 model year and everyone had an opinion. The design firm of Loewy Associates, founded by renowned industrial designer Raymond Loewy, was the de facto design department of Studebaker from the Loewy office in South Bend,  Indiana. The actual shape of the body first appeared in 1947, although with a more traditionally styled front sheetmetal and grille. This car was low profile with a large glass area and flow-through fenders that was so far ahead of the designs from the competition that it didn’t require a complete redesign until the 1953 model year. In the meantime, the car got some tweaking of the styling from year to year and the most notable was the spinner nose or more commonly known “bullet-nose”  front end of 1950. 

The spinner nose may have been controversial and many people did not like it, but it proved a sales success. It foreshadowed many design trends to come, such as a bold center element at the front end, think the Edsel grille or bullet like elements on the front end such as any mid-fifties GM product with their bullet shaped bumper overriders.

The sales success of the car was not to be argued. 1950 was the best sales year for Studebaker in the company's history. Yet, 14 years later, Studebaker would be out of business. Studebaker was not ultimately a victim of outright mismanagement or bad cars but a combination of fatal market factors. First, the company's location in Indiana put it further away from the bulk of suppliers, a minor but meaningful disadvantage. Secondly, the old factory staffed by workers paid at the same rate as the big three was less productive than the more modern factories of the competitors in Michigan. The final nail in Studebaker’s coffin was the overwhelming efficiencies of the big three and the brutal price war they were fighting, particularly between Chevrolet and Ford. Combining all those factors, Studebaker and all the other independants, could no longer effectively compete. Going from iconic styling with great sales to “out of business” in 14 years after a century of manufacturing carriages and cars is a sad legacy.