Studebaker

Studebaker's 1966 closure ended 114 years of manufacturing that began with wagons before the Civil War. The company that helped build America's infrastructure couldn't compete with the Big Three's scale. Merger with Packard in 1954 combined two weak players. The Avanti - a design masterpiece - couldn't save an uncompetitive business. Studebaker demonstrated that industrial pioneers face extinction when scale economies overtake them.