[Lee Stewart]

Studebaker introduced an overhead-valve V8 in 1951, years before Ford or Chevrolet, and it was an impressive achievement for a company a fraction of the size of the mighty Big Three.

Introduced in 1951 on the deluxe-sized Commander line, the Studebaker V8 beat Ford and Chevrolet to the market with a postwar overhead-valve V8 by several years. Months earlier, Studebaker had pulled off a similar coup with the company’s first automatic transmission, which was developed in collaboration with Borg-Warner and marketed as Automatic Drive. We might not think of Studebaker as an industry innovator in those days, but it seems the South Bend automaker could hold its own in engineering against the production giants of the Motor City—for the time being at least.