Sherwood Harry Egbert (July 24, 1920 – 1969)''Seattle Daily Times'', July 31, 1969, Page 38. was an American businessman and marine. He served as president of the

Studebaker-Packard Corporation The Studebaker-Packard Corporation is the entity created in 1954 by the purchase of the Studebaker Corporation of South Bend, Indiana, by the Packard Motor Car Company of Detroit, Michigan. While Studebaker was the larger of the two companies, ...

and

Studebaker Corporation Studebaker was an American wagon and automobile manufacturer based in South Bend, Indiana, with a building at 1600 Broadway, Times Square, Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Founded in 1852 and incorporated in 1868 as the Studebaker Brothers Man ...

from February 1, 1961,''Wall Street Journal'', December 29, 1960, Page 2. to November 24, 1963.''Seattle Daily Times'', July 12, 1964, Page 96.

History

Egbert was born July 24, 1920, in Easton,

Kittitas County, Washington Kittitas County () is a county located in the U.S. state of Washington. At the 2020 census, its population was 44,337. Its county seat and largest city is Ellensburg. The county was created in November 1883 when it was carved out of Yakima ...

. He studied engineering at

Washington State University Washington State University (WSU, or colloquially Wazzu) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Pullman, Washington, United States. Founded in 1890, WSU is also one of the oldest Land-grant uni ...

for two years. In 1942, he joined the

United States Marine Corps The United States Marine Corps (USMC), also referred to as the United States Marines or simply the Marines, is the maritime land force service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is responsible for conducting expeditionar ...

and became a major. He served in the South Pacific. He joined Studebaker from the

McCulloch Motors Corporation McCulloch Motors Corporation is an American manufacturer of chainsaws and other outdoor power tools. The company was founded in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1943 by Robert Paxton McCulloch as a manufacturer of small two-stroke gasoline engines and ...

, with no experience of the

automobile A car, or an automobile, is a motor vehicle with wheels. Most definitions of cars state that they run primarily on roads, Car seat, seat one to eight people, have four wheels, and mainly transport private transport#Personal transport, peopl ...

industry.Business: Sherwood Harry Egbert
Profile at Time.com, 21 April 1961. He replaced former president Harold E. Churchill under a corporate goal of diversification—to get the company out of carmaking and "absorb Studebaker's tax loss credits ($94 million) by merging with prosperous companies". Instead, Egbert took a genuine interest in the cars and moved his home to the Studebaker

proving grounds A proving ground is an installation or reservation in which technology such as weapons, military tactics and automobile prototypes are experimented with or tested. Proving grounds can be operated by government bodies or civilian industries. They ...

lodge. He set out to resurrect the auto division's flagging fortunes, encouraged by industry reports of projected sales figures that indicated that there would still be room for a smaller manufacturer. He initiated production of the stylish

Avanti Avanti (in Italian, meaning 'ahead', 'forward', or 'before', and also an unrelated Sanskrit name) may refer to: Vehicles * Studebaker Avanti, a model of automobile built by Studebaker * Avanti II, a successor model made by Avanti Motor Corporati ...

, based on a

Lark Larks are passerine birds of the family Alaudidae. Larks have a cosmopolitan distribution with the largest number of species occurring in Africa. Only a single species, the horned lark, occurs in North America, and only Horsfield's bush lark occ ...

chassis A chassis (, ; plural ''chassis'' from French châssis ) is the load-bearing framework of a manufactured object, which structurally supports the object in its construction and function. An example of a chassis is a vehicle frame, the underpart ...

and

drivetrain A drivetrain (also frequently spelled as drive train or sometimes drive-train) or transmission system, is the group of components that deliver mechanical power from the prime mover to the driven components. In automotive engineering, the driv ...

with

fiberglass Fiberglass (American English) or fibreglass (English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English) is a common type of fibre-reinforced plastic, fiber-reinforced plastic using glass fiber. The fibers may be randomly arranged, flattened i ...

bodywork designed by a team headed by

Raymond Loewy Raymond Loewy ( , ; November 5, 1893 – July 14, 1986) was a French-born American industrial designer who achieved fame for the magnitude of his design efforts across a variety of industries. He was recognized for this by ''Time'' magazi ...

. The car was in production by the spring of 1962, insufficient lead time for comprehensive assembly and distribution of the many orders soon received. He had hoped to sell 20,000 Avantis that year but could only build 1200. To revamp the Studebaker passenger cars, Egbert hired

Brooks Stevens Clifford Brooks Stevens (June 7, 1911 – January 4, 1995) was an American industrial designer of home furnishings, appliances, automobiles, passenger railroad cars, and motorcycles, as well as a graphic designer and stylist. Stevens founded Br ...

"on a minuscule budget", with good results such as the Gran Turismo Hawk; overall sales continued to be well below the break-even point. Disagreements between Egbert and Studebaker's board of directors exacerbated the illness with which he was diagnosed in 1962.

Cancer Cancer is a group of diseases involving Cell growth#Disorders, abnormal cell growth with the potential to Invasion (cancer), invade or Metastasis, spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Po ...

surgeries and lengthy recuperation absence allowed the board to ease him out of office, replacing him as president with Byers A. Burlingame. He resigned on November 24, 1963. Studebaker closed its U.S. auto manufacturing operations just a month later. Production was moved to the Canadian plant where Studebaker continued building cars until March 1966. In 1964 Egbert established a management consulting firm in Los Angeles. Egbert died in Los Angeles in 1969.

History

See also

Footnotes

Further reading