MADE IN HAMILTON
20TH CENTURY
INDUSTRIAL TRAIL

SITE 37
STUDEBAKER CORPORATION, 1948

Hamilton, an "auto town"? A small number of Hamilton companies produced cars and trucks in limited quantities from shortly after the turn of the 20th century. These tended to be small, short-lived operations. At different times larger companies like National Steel Car or Sawyer-Massey produced multi-use trucks in addition to their main product lines. Studebaker was the first large automobile plant to meet with success in the city.

The Studebaker Corporation of South Bend, Indiana was already a major automobile producer when it began turning cars out of the former Otis-Fensom armaments plant in Hamilton in 1948. You can still see "Studebaker" spelled out in faded letters on the Burlington Street side of this building.

At times the plant employed close to 800 workers in the production of such popular auto-mobiles as the Champion and the Lark. Prospects looked even brighter when the company closed its South Bend plant in 1963 and moved all North American vehicle production to Hamilton. But Studebaker's days as a car producer were numbered when sales began to slump soon after. When the plant closed in 1966 it was the city's tenth largest employer.

Hamilton-based car and truck producers before the Second World War included the Schacht Motor Car Company, the Willys-Overland Motor Company and the Beaver Truck Corporation, among others.

The Body Build

"You would come in the body build where everything started... all guys, no robots. All the guys in there with spot welding guns, and gloves and aprons and masks, welding this car together" Gerry Crosby

"If you had your pick you wouldn't work there. Sparks all the time... They didn't protect people like they do today... They didn't supply clothes so you ended up with holes all in your clothes. I had one of these fleece-lined shirts. I never thought about it. Went down to the spot welder and this thing took flame all over... it sort of burned all the fuzz off it. " Lloyd Hicks

Workers in this plant were organized as United Auto Workers Local 525, now part of the Canadian Auto Workers.

A history of Hamilton Studebaker workers, entitled "Working and Motoring in a Steeltown", is available at the gift shop of the Ontario Workers' Arts and Heritage Centre.