Wednesday, December 03, 2008

Hail to the Studebaker

This week my travels bring me to Canton Ohio home of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. I've been in this town many times and only stopped at the HoF once, and that was to get something from the gift shop.

If I have free time here, I'd much rather go to a much smaller, less known museum: the Canton Classic Car Museum.



It's not a huge museum but it does have several very nice old cars, including most of the Marshall Belden collection.



One of the jewels of their collection is the 1937 Studebaker President. Now Canton can be a rough town, and that's been true for quite a while. Back in the 1930s the Canton police bought a riot car, which was designed to be bulletproof (or at least strong enough to withstand a shot from a .45) This car was used for over 50 years without a breakdown. It spent most of it's time transporting money, but it was occasionally used in more hostile situations where the armor plating was necessary.

It's been restored recently, complete with the extra thick windows and machine gun ports!



They don't build them like that any more!

4 comments:

David aka True Blue Sam said...

Now I have to plan a road trip!

NotClauswitz said...

There's a small museum in San Juan Bautista filled with Studebakers, but no the motor-carriages, these are old Studebaker horse wagons with wheels about 6-feet tall - I think some might have come across with the Donner party because several of the Party settled there. San Jose was the next biggest Mormon town next to Salt Lake City...

Home on the Range said...

I took my folks to both places in 07 when they visited. We do the usually excursions through neighboring states. Next year, if they're up to it, the Air Museum in Dayton. . only a two hour drive from here.

I'm not a big sports fan but the museum was cool.

word verification: urvel. . Didn't he make popcorn?

theirritablearchitect said...

There are a couple of crazy guys trying to resurrect the Studebaker automotive nameplate, believe it or not.

I can't believe that they'll actually pull it off though, the regulatory structure for building cars is about to get a lot tighter.