My Dad is Rebuilding a Studebaker Truck

Featured

Jacob Titus

Creator of West.SB

Last week my dad purchased a weather-worn 1952 Studebaker 2R-series truck.

Robert Bourke designed the Studebaker 2R-series as a member of Raymond Loewy’s famed studio, and the company produced the series from 1949 to 1953 in the new Chippewa Avenue plant in South Bend. In 1952 alone, the company sold 58,985 of the trucks—7.2 percent of the global market share.

My dad, Shawn Titus, lives in South Bend’s Far Northwest neighborhood and currently works as a test engineer at Clark Testing in Buchanan, MI. Previously, he spent fourteen years working at Camp Ray Bird on the city’s Westside, and the prior decade in aerospace and aeronautics engineering in Akron, OH. He is capable and intelligent, but this truck presents a new challenge.

The truck was originally used as a farm truck, but has spent twenty-plus years sitting in Minnesota and South-West Michigan, hence the rusty photographs below. He is planning to rebuild it from the ground up using mostly, but not exclusively, original parts.

I am personally excited to help document his progress, write about the history of the truck, and watch my dad exercise his mechanical creativity in a new way. The 2R was one of Studebaker’s most innovative and influential post-war designs, so rooting around in its history is my idea of a good time. And one step deeper than the excitement, I am struck by the symbolism of rebuilding this truck in the Far Northwest neighborhood.

Though it is impossible to tell the story of Studebaker without South Bend, we've rarely seen its glistening vehicles in our working-class neighborhoods. I’m hopeful that this rusty, sixty-eight-year-old truck will help tell a new story.

Subscribe to our newsletter to follow the process, and continue scrolling to see photographs of the truck today.