Sherwood Egbert

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sherwood Harry Egbert (1920-1969) served as president of the Studebaker-Packard Corporation and Studebaker Corporation from 1961 to 1963.

A former Marine, Egbert came to Studebaker from the McCulloch Corporation, and, while he was not known from the first as an automobile man, he certainly became one once he entered the door of the Studebaker Administration Building.

Originally hired to ease Studebaker out of automobile production and into diversification, Egbert found a lot to like in the cars and trucks built by the Indiana company, and he set out to resurrect the auto division's flagging fortunes.

He immediately set to work on a stylish, sporty "halo" car for Studebaker, the Avanti. Based on a Studebaker Lark chassis and drivetrain, the Avanti wore swoopy fiberglass bodywork designed by a team of stylists headed by the renowned industrial designer Raymond Loewy. In just a few short weeks in the spring of 1961, Loewy's men, John Ebstein, Bob Andrews and Tom Kellogg produced the design, and the car was in production by the spring of 1962, although not without problems.

To revamp the stodgy existing line of Studebaker passenger cars, Egbert brought Brooks Stevens on board to make big changes for small money; Stevens later admitted the $7 million budget for the 1962 redesigns of the Lark and Hawk was "about enough to tool a Plymouth door handle ... but Sherwood wasn't an automobile man; he didn't know it was impossible."

All of Egbert's machinations in South Bend didn't go over well with the members of the company's board of directors, who had, assumed Egbert would simply shut down the auto operations. Major disagreements between the parties exacerbated the illness with which Egbert was diagnosed in 1962; cancer surgeries and lengthy recuperation allowed the board to ease him out of office in November 1963.

Studebaker built its last car in March 1966; Egbert died in 1969 at the age of 49.