Vintage.es has a feature on Port Washington, LI in the ’40s. Lots of interesting architecture, from old New England to the latest postwar houses with attached garages. This magnificent building especially caught my eye:

A Studie dealer at 145 Main St, with a ’42 Champion in front. I couldn’t resist checking Googlestreet. Normally a downtown building has been wiped out by urban renewal or covered with 1970s mansard crap. Not this one!

Remarkably preserved. From another view, the clock and front door are still original. The only obvious difference is that the shrubs newly planted in 1949 are mature now.

Irrelevant thought: The font of the vertical STUDEBAKER sign is Cyrillic, which reminds me that Studie trucks were big in the Lend-Lease program and stuck around in Russia for a long time afterward, influencing Russian trucks. But oddly, Studie never actively participated in Russian manufacture or sales. Ford had a directly controlled division in Russia, making tractors and Model As. GM licensed Buick bodies and engines to Russian makers in 1931. Packard licensed and cooperated with Russian makers in the ’40s. Studie missed the opportunity to leverage their accidental influence into profit.

Hmm. The last sentence is unnecessarily long.

“Studie missed the opportunity.”

That’s the whole story of the company. Nash/AMC lasted much longer because it knew its own SKILLS and rarely missed an opportunity to use its own particular SKILLS. Studebaker tried to be GM and failed. Nash tried to be Nash and succeeded.