Paul G. Hoffman, , and the Car Culture

Alan R. Raucher"

Almost from its earliest days the automobile has been an object of both special American affection and controversy.' Pro- foundly affecting nearly all segments of society and changing lifestyles in so many ways, the system that combined private cars and public roads has raised important and still unresolved questions. Are private cars preferable to other forms of trans- portation, such as railroads and streetcars? If Americans are to rely on cars rather than mass transit, are the cars properly designed and built? What kinds of governmental policies can best protect the public interest? These are no idle questions, especially for automakers. During the early twentieth century, mounting traffic con- gestion and accidents led local and state governments to act. In addition to considering the kinds of streets and highways that could accommodate the automobile, governments imposed maximum speed limits and other restrictions aimed at im- proving traffic safety. At the same time, some critics charged that manufacturers were responsible for the accident toll be- cause they produced unsafe cars. Automakers feared that such talk would cause consumer resistance and harmful governmen- tal interference. Nevertheless, until the depression of the 1930s, car ownership within the United States increased. Road building and other governmental action, often promoted by the

* Alan R. Raucher is associate professor of history, Wayne State Univer- sity, Detroit, Michigan. Research for this article was supported by grants from Wayne State, the Harry S. Truman Library Institute, and the American Philo- sophical Society. John B. Rae, The Road and the Car in American Life (Cambridge, Mass., 1971); James J. Flink, The Car Culture (Cambridge, Mass., 1975); and B. Bruce-Briggs, The War against the Automobile (New York, 1977), provide the fullest and best examinations of the controversy, though their value judgments differ. 210 Indiana Magazine of History manufacturers themselves, seemingly reduced public criticism of the automotive industry.2 With the advent of the Great Depression, however, the industry faced renewed threats. Economic failure lowered the reputation of business and made Americans more willing to scrutinize their economic system. Some critics charged that the oligopolistic nature of the automotive industry, with its lack of meaningful competition, produced among manufacturers simi- lar policies regarding car designs and prices. Others blamed the presence of competition for irrational marketing policies, in- cluding annual model change^.^ The emerging consumer movement, while largely ignoring the broadest political and philosophical issues, focused critical perspective on the cars themselves. Evaluating car designs, prices, and operating costs, consumer advocates asked why America did not have safer, cheaper, and more fuel efficient cars. Within the consumer movement during the 1930s, the chief critic of the automotive industry, Dewey Palmer, charged that automobile manufacturers’ policies abused the buying public and the national economy. According to Palmer, the technical supervisor at Consumers Union, the industry exploited the average man’s desire for status by providing a delusion of grandeur. Automotive advertising and planned obsolescence conditioned Americans to desire excessive power and speed, flashy eye appeal, and corlspicuous display. The industry did virtually nothing to improve the safety of its products or the economy of operation. Instead of safe and economical transpor- tation, the automotive industry contributed to the “inevitable depletion of our crude oil supply” and left large portions of the population unable to afford new cars4 Automakers, of course, attempted to defend themselves from such criticism. Even before industry leaders

* Flink, Cur Culture, 159-60. Joel W. Eastman, “Styling Vs. Safety: The American Automobile Industry and the Development of Automotive Safety, 1900-1966” (Ph.D. dissertation, Department of History, University of Florida, 19731, vii. Dewey H. Palmer, ?‘If You Buy a Car,” New Republic, LXXXVI (April 22, 1936), 304-306; Palmer, “Automobiles-Model 1937,” ibid., LXXXIX (December 30, 1936), 261-63; Palmer, “Automobiles of 1938,” ibid., XCIII (January 4, 1938), 242-44; Dewey H. Palmer and Laurence Crooks, Millions on Wheels (New York, 1938); Palmer, “Automobiles of 1939,” New Republic, XCVII (De- cember 28, 1938), 222-25. Dewey H. Palmer to Laurence Crooks, December 17, 1958, Colston E. Warne Collection (Center for the Study of the Consumer Movement, Mount Vernon, N.Y.); E.D. Kennedy, The Automobile Industry: The Coming of Age of Capitalism’s Favorite Child (New York, 1941), 231, 318-21. Hoffman, Studebaker, and the Car Culture 211

responded to public concern about traffic congestion and acci- dents. They started, for example, what they called a balanced traffic safety program. Under the slogan of the “Three E’s”- education, enforcement, and engineering-automakers focused on driver behavior and road conditions. After the war they claimed that greater safety could be achieved through a uni- form vehicle code, safe driving classes, and standard licensing of drivers, as well as more and better-planned streets and highway^.^ By their organized efforts automakers helped to win endorsement for such policies from the federal government and in the process undoubtedly helped to divert public criticism from their own policies. When automakers did discuss basic policies regarding car designs and prices, they usually emphasized their commitment both to high quality and to consumer sovereignty. According to that argument, success came to those who offered, within com- mercial limitations, what consumers really wanted. Prices in- creased because manufacturers responded to demand by im- proving their products and thus car values. Even Nash, a small independent manufacturer, operated according to the slogan “Build up to a standard, not down to a pri~e.”~At , which had been built during the 1920s upon the strat- egy of multiple models and annual changes, one executive blandly confessed that the “automobile industry recognizes the obsolescence factor in business and incorporates it in its every day practice.”7 By employing the strategy of obsolescence some automak- ers, most notably General Motors, enjoyed continuing profits despite the Depression, but economic conditions during the 1930s suggested to others within the industry the need for change.8 Manufacturers who did not do well when new car sales fell had strong incentives to innovate. Thus, during the Depression decade and up to the end of World War 11, crisis within the industry created the opportunity and the impetus, perhaps the last for some time, to alter marketing strategies. In any case this was a period when the car culture underwent a severe test.

Eastman, “Styling Vs. Safety,” 160-63, 166-68. Christy Borth, Mankind on the Moue: The Story of Highways (Washington, 1969), 284. Tom Mahoney, The Story of George Romney: Builder, Salesman, Crusader (New York, 1960), 141. ‘Ralph A. Richardson and Harper Leech, The Story of the Automobile Industry (Chicago, 1940), 91-92. ” US., Federal Trade Commission, Report on the Motor Vehicle Industry (Washington, 1939), 795-823. 212 Indiana Magazine of History

One industry leader especially sensitive to the complex issues involved in success for the automotive business was Paul G. Hoffman. The son of George Delos Hoffman, a prosperous and prominent inventor, corporate executive, and entrepreneur from Chicago, Paul Hoffman attended the University of Chicago for one year before beginning to sell cars in 1909. Highly successful as a salesman and sales manager, he started his own Studebaker dealership in Los Angeles ten years later. By 1925, when he became Studebaker’s vice-president in charge of sales, he was a thirty-four-year-old millionaire. He had also established a local reputation in Los Angeles as a businessman with broad vision and a strong sense of civic responsibility. Later, as president of Studebaker and especially as adminis- trator of the Marshall Plan following World War 11, Paul Hoffman won acclaim for statesmanship of the first rank. After 1950 he put his ability to good use as the first president of the Ford Foundation and after 1958 as the director of the United Nations Special Fund for economic development. For about half a century, until his retirement in 1972 at the age of eighty, Hoffman stood as a champion of technological progress, eco- nomic growth, and democratic freedom^.^ Whatever his higher motives, Hoffman never pretended that his involvement in civic affairs was exclusively altruistic. Starting in the 1930s he forcefully preached, by word and deed, a managerial philosophy of enlightened self-interest. He always assumed that the profit motive and corporate pursuit of eco- nomic gain, when properly informed, were compatible with the public welfare.1° His own involvement in civic affairs in part grew out of his desire to create a healthy economic climate in which car sales thrived, and through that involvement he en- hanced the visibility of Studebaker, which was struggling to survive bankruptcy after 1933, as well as his own reputation. Neither typical of the industry nor a complete maverick, Hoffman stood well within the mainstream of the industry’s policies and views. He also clearly operated with the grain of American culture, not against it. He built his business career on a firm understanding of American preferences for privacy and convenience as exemplified by the single-family home and

Crane Haussamen, The Story of Paul G. Hoffman (Santa Barbara, 1966) is a brief and uncritical biography prepared for the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions. lo See, for example, Paul G. Hoffman, “The Corporation as a Social Instru- ment,” in Bronson Batchelor, ed., The New Outlook in Business (New York, 1940). 105-16. Hoffman, Studebaker, and the Car Culture 213

d 214 Indiana Magazine of History

the privately owned car. He never doubted his observation in 1929 that the car was and would always remain “America’s greatest plaything and greatest necessity.” As a top automotive executive and, almost by default, the industry’s “apostle of safety,” he addressed the major questions raised about “Amer- ica’s great personal transportation systern.”’l In two areas Hoffman played a major role in the automotive industry’s effort to shape the car culture. He promoted what he called sound urban development based on highway construction, and he provided the managerial leadership that determined Studebaker’s innovative approach to car design. His experience in both areas indicates that even with a philosophy of en- lightened self-interest he could not resolve the complex issues surrounding the automobile. For car sales to thrive, Hoffman realized, motorists needed adequate roads. During the early 1920s, while he was a car dealer in Los Angeles, booming sales created chaotic traffic congestion. The increasing number of automobiles on city streets raised public concern about safety and briefly led city officials to ban downtown parking. Hoffman quickly recognized the threat to car sales. In an effort to combat the problem he became chairman of the road committee of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce and helped to organize the Traffic Commission of Los Angeles, a nongovernmental body on which he served as president. Hoffman insisted that sound policies had to be based on scientific study of the facts; therefore, the Traffic Commission hired the well-known firm of planning ex- perts headed by Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. According to the resulting report, which Hoffman delivered to city officials, traf- fic safety in Los Angeles could be improved by properly planned streets. Olmsted’s firm urged the city to widen existing streets, separate some intersections by grade, and expand construction into outlying areas for future needs.12 Such policies of course stood to boost car sales.

“Paul G. Hoffman and James H. Greene, Marketing Used Cars (New York, 1929), 179 Hoffman, “America’s Highways-New Frontiers,” Roads and Streets, LXXXIII (January, 1940), 35-36. 12Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce to Paul G. Hoffman, June 2, 1923, Box 50, Paul G. Hoffman Papers (Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, Mo.); Paul G. Hoffman, “The Traffic Commission of Los Angeles-Its Work on the Traffic Problem,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, CXVI (November, 1924), 246-50. See Mark S. Foster, “The Model-T, the Hard Sell, and Los Angeles’s Urban Growth: The Decentralization of Los . Angeles during the 1920s,” Pacific Historical Review, XLIV (November, 1975), 459-84. Hoffman, Studebaker, and the Car Culture 215

When Hoffman became a vice-president of Studebaker in 1925, he expanded his effort to promote scientific study of traffic problems. He knew that public statements of good intent did not improve safety or win public approval; so, in 1926, he persuaded Harvard to establish the Bureau for Street Traffic Research, financed with $10,000 a year from the Studebaker Corporation and named for Studebaker’s president, Albert Rus- sel . Free from direct interference by Hoffman or other automakers, the bureau conducted serious research on acci- dents and provided a year’s academic instruction in traffic con- trol for respresentatives from city and state engineering de- partment~.~~Such activity, of course, also helped to forge an alliance of vested interests among government highway de- partments, academic safety experts, and the automotive indus- try. Hoffman himself participated in the national conferences on street and highway safety called by secretaries of commerce Herbert Hoover and Robert Lament.'* Like other industry spokesmen, Hoffman emphasized driver behavior as a key to safety. Vigorous law enforcement aimed at the minority of reckless, drunk, or other accident- prone drivers could, he claimed, substantially lower the acci- dent rate. With this quite sensible approach he hoped to head off controls that could retard car sales. The intent of such enforcement, according to Hoffman, should be to educate drivers about safety, not to punish violators or to raise reve- nues. Hoffman also did not want states to impose absolute speed limits or to require speed governors on cars.15 Ironically, the apostle of safety was also an apostle of speed. During the late 1920s and early 1930s, while Hoffman was Studebaker’s vice-president in charge of sales, the com- pany’s advertising emphasized speed performance, including the success of its engines in racing cars.16 Hoffman personally insisted that the American public demanded speed as well as safety and that reliable capability for speed and acceleration actually contributed to safety. In any case, he suggested, speed was one measure of civilization. Dr. Louis I. Dublin, a New

l3 Hoffman to President and Fellows of Harvard University, June 16, 1926, Folder 508, Abbott L. Lowell Papers (Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Mass.); Hoffman to A. Lawrence Lowell, April 25, 1928, ibid. l4 Automobile Topics, XCV (September 28, 1929), 648. l5 Hoffman, “The Traffic Commission of Los Angeles,” Automobile Topics, XCV (August 31, 1929), 282; ibid. (October 5, 1929), 738. l6 “Less Speed and More Safety,” Literary Digest, CXIV (August 20, 1932), 27. 216 Indiana Magazine of History

PAUL G. HOFFMANCOMPANY, HOLLYWOOD BRANCH, Los ANGELES,1925

PAULG. HOFFMANCOMPANY, Los ANGELES,c. 1930

Courtesy Discovery Hall Museum, South Bend, Indiana. Hoffman, Studebaker, and the Car CuLture 217

York insurance statistician, strongly denounced as “outra- geous” Hoffman’s comment concerning the relationship between speed and civilization. The Studebaker vice-president retaliated by ridiculing Dublin’s outlandish notion of an absolute speed limit of 35 miles per hour. Such a proposal, he pointed out, would merely generate news without anyone taking it seri- ously, particularly in a country of vast distances with people always in a hurry.17 During the early 1930s, however, au- tomakers decided to eliminate references to top speed from their advertising.l8 By 1930 the Depression had created other obstacles for Hoffman’s safety program. Street and highway construction, though supported by some as public works projects to provide jobs, became more difficult to finance. States greatly increased taxes on gasoline, making driving costs much higher, and many states diverted those revenues to nonhighway uses.lS Within the automotive industry support for traffic safety fell as sales fell. Hoffman realized that Studebaker could not afford, virtu- ally alone, to support the Bureau for Street Traffic Research. As a director of the Automobile Manufacturers Association and chairman of its Traffic Safety Committee, he tried unsuccess- fully to get other automakers to assume the financial burden.20 If the automobile manufacturers supported safety research, Hoffman argued, the industry would benefit from the resulting substantial improvement in traffic congestion and would re- ceive favorable publicity as well. According to Hoffman, who still owned a dealership in Los Angeles, lack of street facilities, parking, and proper traffic regulation created sales resistance. In urban areas many who could afford to own cars did not do so because commuting daily by public transportation was more convenient than driving. He nevertheless rejected the pes- simistic conclusions of some industry observers that the car market had reached saturation. He claimed that even during the Depression car sales would increase if traffic conditions improved. The future of the industry depended, Hoffman averred, on proper traffic safeguards and, even more impor-

17Automobile Topics, XC (June 2, 19281, 308; ibid., XCV (August 31, 1929), 282; ibid., XCV (October 5, 1929), 738; Hoffman to Louis I. Dublin, October [q, 1929, Box 150, Hoffman Papers. l8 Eastman, “Styling Vs. Safety,” 127, 130-31, 148. Mark Rose, Interstate: Express Highway Politics, 1941-1956 (Lawrence, Kans., 19791, 9-10, 20Hoffman to Roy D. Chapin, April 30, 1934, Box 27, Roy Chapin Papers (Michigan Historical Collections, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor). 218 Indiana Magazine of History tantly, on highway construction to reduce congestion and other unsafe conditions.21 The Automobile Manufacturers Association responded slowly to Hoffman’s prodding; even his Traffic Safety Commit- tee approved a few publicity releases without doing much else. Then, in 1935, a sensationalistic article on traffic fatalities appeared in Reader’s Digest and generated widespread public discussion when civic organizations distributed millions of re- prints. Although the article focused on bad driving as the chief cause of accidents, it did refer to the car as the “deadliest missile,” and its gory details gave ammunition to those ad- vocating stiffer governmental restrictions on highway use. Hoffman quickly responded to that threat by asking the Auto- mobile Manufacturers Association to support a major safety program. Fearing the adverse impact of such publicity on legis- lation and sales, the trade association instructed Hoffman’s committee to study the problem.22 Hoffman conferred with Walter Pyke Johnson, Washington representative and vice-president of the Automobile Manufac- turers Association, and other members of the Traffic Safety Committee. They agreed that action was needed. The entire industry, not just the manufacturers, had to finance a major effort to improve traffic safety. Hoffman recommended that the industry leave the actual operations of the safety program to independent experts and avoid publicity or credit for itself. The return on investment would come when accident rates, and thus adverse comment, declined.23 In January, 1936, the Automobile Manufacturers Associ- ation launched its first serious highway safety program. Budgeted at $450,000 the experimental project received a large personal contribution and a strong endorsement from Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., of General Motors. The trade association chose Hoffman to oversee the program and to disperse grants to specialists in the safety field. Within a few months industry leaders, though unwilling to devote their own time, concluded that Hoffman’s program warranted permanent support. They

21 Hoffman to Chapin, January 25, February 19, April 30, 1934, ibid.; New York Times, January 7, 1934; Paul G. Hoffman, “Why the Automobile Industry Should Believe in City Planning,” City Planning, VI (April, 1930), 96. 22 Joseph Chamberlain Furnas, “And Sudden Death,” Reader’s Digest, XXVII (August, 1935), 31-36; Eastman, “Styling Vs. Safety,” 178-80, 228-29. 23 Hoffman, speech to Automobile Safety Foundation, October 4, 1962, Box 141, Hoffman Papers. Hoffman, Studebaker, and the Car Culture 219

thus created the Automobile Safety Foundation (ASF) and named him its president.24 In his new capacity Hoffman argued that the industry’s balanced safety program was succeeding. Industry critics, citing statistics calculated on car registrations, had reported fright- fully high accident rates. Hoffman countered with statistics calculated on mileage driven to show that the rates were actu- ally declining.25 Further success, according to Hoffman, re- quired an “enlightened and organized public opinion” willing to pay for massive highway construction. At a time when Ger- many had just created the first national expressway system, he declared that America needed 100,000 miles of “accident proof’ highways. Such a system, a challenge for the American spirit of enterprise, by Hoffman’s calculation would cost $57 billion, would take twenty-five years to build, and could be financed over forty-three yearsz6 Those advocates who linked safety and solution of traffic hazards with highway construction were very persuasive in the late 1930s. State highway departments and local politicians, as well as the automotive industry, agreed that an expanded highway system could help solve traffic problems. Highway construction, particularly of expressways, could create for motorists a traffic utopia. Congestion and safety hazards could be reduced, while employment in the construction industry could be stimulated. The prospect that such a program might receive federal financing made it especially attracti~e.~’

24 According to the Federal Trade Commission’s Report on the Motor Vehi- cle Industry, 79-83, the Automobile Manufacturers Association (AMA) made the decision by December, 1935. See New York Times, January 22, 1936, on Hoffman’s interview with Boake Carter, WABC, January 21, 1936. In a letter of June 7, 1937, Alfred Reeves (AMA) thanked Hoffman for working on a situation that worried the whole industry. Reeves to Hoffman, June 7, 1937, Box 29, Hoffman Papers. Eastman, “Styling Vs. Safety,” 185, pointed out that critics claimed that the industry carefully picked grant aecipients from the “safety establishment.” Z5Automobile Topics, CXXXII (October 31, 1938). Arthur W. Stevens, in Highway Safety and Automobile Styling (Boston, 1941), 31, 148-51, praised the Automobile Safety Foundation but criticized-Hoffman’s deceptive use of statis- tics based on mileage estimated from gasoline consumption. Eastman, in “Styl- ing Vs. Safety,” 201-203, showed that even Hoffman admitted the lack of reliable data for car usage. 26 Paul G. Hoffman, Seven Roads to Safety: A Program to Reduce Auto- mobile Accidents (New York, 1939), 28; New York Times, November 13, 1937; Hoffman tried to have newspapers promote highway construction as a safety measure. See Hoffman to Fred Gaepner, Jr., of the Detroit News, May 2, 1938, Box 1, Blair Moody Papers (Michigan Historical Collections). 27 Rose, Interstate, 9; Mark S. Foster, From Streetcar to Superhighway: American City Planners and Urban Transportation, 1900-1940 (Philadelphia, 1981), 127-30. 220 Indiana Magazine of History

Some urban planners and political reformers saw still an- other function for highway construction. In the same spirit that built the New Deal’s greenbelt towns, they would use highway construction for social and economic regeneration. City slums with their out-moded business sections, deteriorating housing, and inadequate transportation would be replaced by modern low-cost housing and modern facilities. Even the enormously popular General Motors Futurama exhibit at the New York World’s Fair in 1939 suggested that construction of ex- pressways would create opportunities for new city architecture that would provide healthy environments of space and light.28 Though Hoffman supported highway construction, he criticized some of the schemes for urban regeneration discussed in the late 1930s. The ideal solution to America’s housing and transportation needs, he felt, was sound city planning based on what the American people really wanted.29 Back in the 1920s Albert Erskine had praised suburbs for strengthening American families.30 Hoffman himself appre- ciated suburban living; he had grown up in a suburb of Chicago, and his family had settled in a suburb of Los Angeles. When the census of 1940 appeared, he pointed to the growth of suburbs as further proof that Americans preferred to live out- side overcrowded and expensive cities.31 Hoffman’s notion of sound planning called for city slums to be replaced by safe freeways and parking facilities. Slum resi- dents and workers would be relocated in low-cost housing built in rural areas where land cost less. The proper balance between space and population density could be achieved, he thought, by 1961, the same year that General Motors had envisioned the advent of utopia. Freeways would then allow people to com- mute safely and efficiently by private cars between where they wanted to live, in suburbs, and where they worked, in cities.32 Along with many contemporary road engineers and urban planners, Hoffman suggested that an expressway system would foster social cohesion. By reducing geographic barriers that

28 Rose, Interstate, 9; Foster, From Streetcar to Superhighway, 132-50. See Flink, Car Culture, 182-83, for a critique of the New Deal’s failure to question central values, including automobility and suburbia. lS Paul G. Hoffman, with Neil Clark, “America Goes to Town,” Saturday Evening Post, CCXI (April 29, 1939), 8-9, 30-35; Hoffman, “American Highways in 1961,” November 14, 1941, Box 103, Hoffman Papers. 30 , “Monogamy and the Motor Car,” North American Review, CCXXVIII (August, 1929), 145-51. See also Flink, Car Culture, 145. Hoffman, “American Highways in 1961.” 32 Hoffman, with Clark, “America Goes to Town.” Hoffman, Studebaker, and the Car Culture 22 1

separated and isolated people, it would make community ac- tivities more accessible and thus would contribute to progress, higher standards of living, and even national unity. Not inci- dently, an expanded highway system would also revitalize the car market, which had sagged during the Depression, for sub- urbs had begun to depend more upon automobiles than upon streetcars for tran~portation.~~ After the Depression, when Americans began to buy more cars, Hoffman returned to his emphasis on highway construc- tion as a solution to traffic congestion. The connection between the automotive industry’s traffic safety program and its promo- tion of highway construction, present from the creation of the Automobile Safety Foundation, had become clearer in 1942. In that year the ASF broadened its charter to include support for “development on a sound financial and engineering basis of modern street and highway facilities.” Hoffman, the industry’s “guiding spirit” of traffic safety, remained as chairman of the ASF, but he passed the presidency to Pyke Johnson, a long- time highway booster.34 By 1944 officials of the Automobile Safety Foundation were alerting Hoffman that accidents and congestion were pushing traffic safety back into the limelight. Johnson, of course, hoped to avoid governmental restrictions that could hurt the industry; accordingly, the ASF suggested that highway construction could solve the traffic problem and also give a boost to the postwar economy.35 During the postwar era Hoffman promoted his ideas in public forums. At President Harry S. Truman’s Highway Safety Conference, for example, he emphasized driver education and highway construction as solutions to traffic problems. Rising congestion and accidents, he declared, resulted from traffic vol- ume and density beyond road capacity. What America still needed was a system of modern expressways. Never losing sight of the profit incentive, Hoffman told car dealers that they had to back such a program or lose customers. If congestion and

33 Hoffman, “Amel ica’s Highways-New Frontiers,” 35-36; Hoffman and Greene, in Marketing Used Cars, 137, noted that workers living in new suburbs were dependent on cars for transportation and would be potential buyers of used cars. See Foster, From Streetcar to Superhighway, especially 91-115, for a well-argued analysis of city planners’ generally optimistic views regarding automobiles as desirable urban transportation before World War 11. 34 Borth, Mankind on the Moue, 284; Eastman, “Styling Vs. Safety,” 180, 187. 35 Donald Kennedy (ASF) to Hoffman, January 25, 1944, Box 105, Hoffman Papers; Walter Pyke Johnson (ASF) to Hoffman, August 8, 1944, Box 106, ibid. 222 Indiana Magazine of History Hoffman, Studebaker, and the Car Culture 223

lack of parking, especially in urban areas, were not solved, people would stop commuting to work by car. So much did Hoffman believe in the benefits of highway construction that during the mid-l950s, when no longer active in the automotive industry, he personally lobbied on behalf of the federal inter- state system.36 Despite the automotive industry’s success in diverting public concern over safety into support for highway construc- tion, questions about car design and economy could not be entirely avoided. Hoffman personally addressed such issues within the management of Studebaker. During the mid-l920s, while a vice-president of the corporation, he fought against annual model changes as illogical, costly, “artificial obsoletion” and argued for cars that were practical and ec~nomical.~~Dur- ing the Depression Studebaker made a serious effort to use economy of operation as a sales argument; thus, the company pioneered in and advertised new technology to reduce fuel con- sumption and frequency of lubrication. Hoffman himself be- lieved that the nation needed smaller, more fuel-efficient cars, perhaps even four-seaters, as families became smaller.3s Hoffman realized, however, that commercial realities re- quired compromises. As did other industry spokesmen, he claimed that consumer sovereignty dictated what the market offered. In a modern society of abundance and “discretionary spending power,” the public could stop buying when products lacked appeal; therefore, business had to adopt policies that constantly induced people to spend. Market research, which Studebaker employed by the mid-l930s, provided manufac- turers with clues about public preferences. With those clues automobile companies could use advertisements and innovative to make the public dissatisfied with old prod- ucts and eager for new ones that worked better and looked

36 Hoffman, speech to Joint Interim Committee on Highways, Streets and Bridges, San Francisco, February 25, 1946, Box 109, Hoffman Papers; Paul G. Hoffman, “Automotive Transport Paces America’s Progress,” Traffic Quarterly, I (April, 1947), 93-102; Hoffman, “The Dealer’s Stake in Highway Safety,” speech to National Automobile Dealers Association, January 27, 1948, Box 113, Hoffman Papers; Senator Edward Thye to Hoffman, May 28, 1956, Box 73, ibid. 37 Hoffman to Albert Russel Erskine, February 4, 1925, Box 150, Hoffman Papers. 38 US.,Congress, Temporary National Economic Committee, Investigation of Concentration of Economic Power, 76 Cong., 2 Sess., Part 21, December 4-8, 1939, “War and Prices” (Washington, 1940), 11181-224; “Studebaker’s Small Car,” Fortune, XIX (April, 19391, 88. 224 Indiana Magazine of History better.39 Critics such as Palmer, of course, felt that such corpo- rate policies abused consumers. According to Hoffman, American automakers met their re- sponsibilities, within commercial limitations, by offering the safest cars possible. Ignoring the failure to adopt European improvements, such as monocoque-all-welded single-unit- body construction, Hoffman pointed to American improvements of the 1920s and 1930s. All-steel closed bodies, lower centers of gravity, four-wheel hydraulic brakes, wider tires, easier shift- ing and steering, safety glass, better mirrors, and windshield wipers proved that manufacturers cared about safety.40 Studebaker’s chief engineer, Delmar G. “Barney” ROOS,who led in the development of more rigid bodies in 1934 models, urged the entire industry to cooperate with agencies of state govern- ments to make cars safer.41 When, in 1937, redesigned car interiors, including dashboards, to reduce hazards, Studebaker and a few other manufacturers quickly followed that example. As president of Studebaker, Hoffman operated on the assumption that safety features actually helped sell cars.42 The 1939 best demonstrated how Hoffman’s concerns about safety and economy blended with his sense of commercial realities. Of conventional size and price, the Champion demonstrated improved fuel efficiency through weight reduction. The entire car was designed around the pas- senger compartment to provide greater safety, and it featured a more rigid frame and lower body to increase stability and ease of handling. One promotional film even showed the Champion being driven off a ramp over the hood of another car with no resulting damage.43 Industry observers immediately praised the Champion’s design. Fortune speculated that it might start a trend back to a real American “people’s car,” something that disappeared in the 1920s with the Model T. Consumers Union rated the Champion with overdrive a “best buy” and praised the simple design that

39New York Times, October 16, 1947. 40Autom~bileTopics, CI (February 7, 1931), 4; Paul G. Hoffman, “Drivers and Roads Lag Behind Cars of Today,” New York Times, November 3, 1935; Hoffman and Delmar G. Roos, “Safety-A Prime Factor in Motor Car Design,” 1936, Box 100, Hoffman Papers; Hoffman, “Highway Safety,” speech to New York Advertising Club, October 27, 1937, ibid.; Eastman, “Styling Vs. Safety,” 180. 187. 41 “Less Speed and More Safety,” 27. 42 Eastman, “Styling Vs. Safety,” 230. 43New York Times, March 14, 1939. Hoffman, Studebaker, and the Car Culture 225

1939 STU~EBAKERCHAMPION

1947 STUDEBAKERCHAMPION

Reproduced from Studebaker Corporation, 100 Years on the Road (South Bend, Ind., 19521, 19. 226 Indiana Magazine of History would facilitate easy repair. Palmer, usually a sharp critic of the industry, reported that the Champion had the best all- around characteristics in the low-priced field. He singled out in particular its ability to provide both adequate performance and economy.44 Although it received critical acclaim and market success, the Champion did not set a trend toward significantly cheaper cars. In fact, when sales lagged briefly in 1940, Studebaker followed a policy common in the industry. The company in- creased the car’s power and weight and freshened the line with deluxe two-toned bodies and harmonized two-toned upholstery. Prices, of course, also increased. The strategy apparently suc- ceeded, for overall sales during 1940 were even better than in the previous year.45 Attempts by other automakers to offer low-priced and more fuel-efficient cars during the late 1930s confirmed the judg- ments of Studebaker’s market research. The Bantam and the Crosley, inexpensive “midget” models built by new companies, failed to sell and suggested that Americans would not buy the kind of small cars sold in Europe. Nor, apparently, would the American consumer buy conventional-sized models that were stripped down to provide more fuel economy at a cheaper price. In 1937 both Ford and Overland introduced such cars, which were underpowered and lacked even hydraulic brakes. Both failed. Nevertheless, Willys’p chief engineer, , who had left Studebaker in 1936 and who later designed the , continued to believe in the commercial feasibility of a car designed for cheap transportation with reasonable comfort and safety .46 George Mason, president of Nash after 1936, had a similar vision. A motorcycle enthusiast, Mason believed that a small, light-weight car with a low retail price and low operating costs could provide the economical transportation Americans needed.

44 “Studebaker’s Light Car,” 86-89, 144ff; “The Studebaker Champion,” Consumers Union Reports, IV (August, 1939), 3; Dewey H. Palmer, “Auto- mobiles of 1940,” New Republic, C (November 29, 1939), 160-62; Palmer, “Automobiles of 1941,” ibid., CIII (December 3, 1941), 891-93. 45 Minutes of Board of Directors of Studebaker, March 22, 1940, vol. IV, p. 421, May 24, 1940, vol. IV, p. 443, Studebaker Papers (Discovery Hall Museum, South Bend, Ind.). 46 Kennedy, Automobile Industry, 309; Harold Katz, The Decline of Compe- tition in the Automobile Industry, 1920-1940 (New York, 1977), 178-79, 195-96, 202-203; “Willys-Overland,”Fortune, XVIII (July, 1938), 38-43, 95, 98; Christy Borth, Masters of Mass Production (Indianapolis, 1945), 224-26; New York Times, January 16, 1938. Hoffman, Studebaker, and the Car Culture 227

Instead of developing a significantly cheaper car, however, Nash, in 1940, followed Studebaker’s strategy of offering greater fuel economy in a conventionally priced car. While Studebaker achieved economy mainly by reducing the weight of the engine and transmission, Nash introduced monocoque con- struction. Used in Europe since the late 1920s, the all-welded single-unit body provided greater strength and durability with lighter weight than did conventional bolted-together body and chassis. With that change Nash increased its sales to second among independents, behind only St~debaker.~’ The modest gains made by Studebaker and Nash, while not based on radical departures, did reveal the potential for inno- vation within the automotive industry. Even with the end of the recession in the late 1930s, manufacturers still faced a depressed economy and limited market. Many Americans sim- ply could not afford to buy the kinds of new cars available in the United States. Some observers felt that, for the market to expand significantly, manufacturers would have to introduce a substantially different kind of car. As a result, during the late 1930s and early 1940s, speculation grew as to the possibility of a new car for the common man. The biggest obstacle to the creation of a safe, streamlined, fuel-efficient car that would sell for $400 instead of $600 to $800 appeared to be the high production costs associated with all-steel bodies. A few indus- trialists, notably Henry Ford and Henry J. Kaiser, supported experiments with new technologies and new materials. Alumi- num, magnesium, plywood, plastics, and fiberglass all proved inacceptable because of high costs and technical difficultie~.~~ Then World War I1 interrupted car production and the efforts to produce a radically new kind of car. Had American family incomes remained depressed and had fuel costs remained high after the war, efforts to produce a safe, cheap car for the common man might have persisted. Economic conditions born out of the war, however, removed incentives for

47 Mahoney, Story of George Romney, 149, 158, 199-200. 48 “Exit the Dream Car,” Newsweek, XXIII (January 24, 1944), 94. Lawr- ence J. White, The Automobile Industry since 1945 (Cambridge, Mass., 1971), 178-80, demonstrated that the Big Three automotive companies abandoned plans for a cheaper car when they discovered the profitable postwar market for conventional cars; according to White, the oligopolistic nature of the industry inhibited other efforts. Richard M. Langworth, Kaiser-Frazer: The Last On- slaught on Detroit (Princeton, 1975), 136, 188; David L. Lewis, The Public Image of Henry Ford: An American Folk Hero and His Company (Detroit, 19761, 283-85, 391-92. 228 Indiana Magazine of History manufacturers to create a new “people’s car.”49 Automakers discovered that increased consumer purchasing power led to a sales boom without a radical departure in policies. The car culture thus survived its severest test basically intact. Led by Hoffman, Studebaker did, nevertheless, offer the public a boldly innovative low-priced car after the war. With a lower center of gravity, more rigid frame, better brakes, and much better visibility, its 1947 Champion was lighter, more economical, and safer than cars in the same price field pro- duced by the Big Three automotive companies. Chief designers , the Parisian-born promoter of streamlining hired by Hoffman in the 1930s, and Virgil M. Exner created this truly distinctive car by fighting the big enemy, weight. At the time, Exner claimed that the average motorist did not want bulky, bulbous, ponderous, elephantine cars that were costly to buy and to operate. For heavy city traffic, where most driving was done, motorists preferred ease of handling and economy achieved by lighter and sleeker cars.5oIf sales volume indicated public preferences, then Exner may have been at least partly right. During the postwar boom, Studebaker reached a market share of more than 4 percent.51 For all Hoffman’s energy and intelligence in running Studebaker, however, he never entirely resolved major ques- tions about the American automotive industry and the trans- portation system that it fostered. On one hand he claimed that the competitive market, even within the oligopolistic automo- tive industry, reflected the genuine preferences of consumers.52 The buyers’ judgment was supposed to be the final measure of the public good. On the other hand he often disapproved of what consumers chose. Hoffman argued, for example, that Americans needed both better highways and smaller, less pow- erful, and safer cars. Under his management Studebaker tried

49 “Overpowered Auto Engines,” Consumers’ Research Bulletin, XVI (Sep- tember, 19451, 17. For retail gasoline prices, including taxes, data from Harold M. Fleming, Gasoline Prices and Competition (New York, 1966), 88-89, must be adjusted by the Consumer Price Index; see U.S., Bureau of the Census, Histori- cal Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970 (Washington, 1975), 210-11. Virgil M. Exner, “Are Dangerous Curves Ahead?’ Automotive Industries, XCIX (December 1, 1948), 45-46. See also Richard M. Langworth, Studebaker: The Postwar Years (Osceola, Wis., 1979), 3; and Jeffrey L. Meickle, Twentieth Century Limited (Philadelphia, 1979), 60-67, 104-107. 51 White, Automobile Industry since 1945, 291, 293, 295. 52 Temporary National Economic Committee, Investigation of Concentration of Economic Power, 11181-224. Hoffman, Studebaker, and the Car Culture 229

to combine that practicality with attractive design to appeal to thoughtful consumers, but during the 1950s cheap gasoline permitted monstrous waste. Thus Exner, the Studebaker de- signer who had promoted light, sleek, and economical cars dur- ing the 1940s, changed his mind; moving to Chrysler, he created the oversized and successful “forward look.” Hoffman held true to his convictions. Even in 1956, when Americans were buying larger and more powerful cars, he wrote: “The day is surely coming when a more sensible type of motor car than those now offered will be in great demand.”53 The postwar boom in which Studebaker for a time partici- pated also brought with it worse traffic congestion and more accidents. At least until the 1960s the automotive industry managed to escape the kind of scrutiny to which it was sub- jected during the 1930s. By the 1970s, however, the significant questions that Hoffman and his contemporaries addressed but failed to answer reemerged to plague automakers. Critics blamed the oligopolistic nature of the industry for uneconomi- cal and unsafe cars. Some cited too much competition, others too little, as a cause for high prices, annual model changes, too few safety devices, and other undesirable features.54 In many ways such criticism indicted broader aspects of American cul- ture as well as the automotive industry. General affluence, mass markets, and American democratic values had, after all, made not only conspicuous consumption and wastefulness but also love of technology and mobility prominent social traits long before the advent of cars and car advertisements. The automotive industry, including Hoffman, shrewdly exploited attitudes already widespread in America; it undoubtedly rein- forced and expanded such attitudes, but it did not create them. The automobile has without question contributed to metropoli- tan sprawl, suburban growth, and high energy costs, but only the worst sort of tunnel vision can overlook the American preference for privacy as exemplified by the single-family home and privately owned car. Similarly, the decline of mass transit systems was due primarily to the American commuters’ desire for privacy and greater freedom of movement, not to nefarious schemes on the part of automakers to deprive the public of alternative means of tran~portation.~~

53 Hoffman to Harry Ferguson, September 21, 1956, Box 65, Hoffman Pa- pers. 54 Eastman, “Styling Vs. Safety,” vii; see also Flink, Car Culture, 191-233, for a summary of criticism of the automobile industry. 55 Foster, From Streetcar to Superhighway, 127. 230 Indiana Magazine of History

Hoffman understood very well the popular preferences of the American public. He also always believed that with ade- quate roads and the right cars on the market Americans would choose what others later called automobility, and he did his best to see that the automotive industry provided the public with the opportunity to make that choice. Whether or not the public’s preference for private automobiles is compatible with the best interests of society in the long run, however, remains unresolved.