Wayne Morris is devoted to Studebakers. You could say it’s in his genes.
He and his older brother, Charles, started working on them as teenagers in their grandfather’s shop, A&M Garage, in the Bronx.
Morris, 38, now runs the first “branch” of A&M, which he and his mother, Louise, opened late last summer in Mamaroneck, about an hour and a half drive from the original A&M location, but closer to the younger Morris’ house.
Louise has taken over operation of the Bronx shop from her father, Tony Caralla, for whom she started working, as a bookkeeper, at age 14. Caralla, a founder of the Studebaker Drivers Club and perhaps one of the best-known Studebaker lovers in the country, died last July of heart failure.
“My grandfather was 86 and he worked up until about two weeks before he died,” Wayne Morris said. “Even when he was in the hospital, he talked about getting back on his feet so he could take care of customers,” filling their parts orders from suppliers of new and used stock and reproductions.
Louise Morris, president of A&M Garage Corp. and Caralla’s only child, runs the parts business-Caralla had given up working on the cars in 1989-out of the Bronx building about four miles from the site of Caralla’s garage, where she and her mother, Susie, 85, have apartments.
“My two sons both worked for their grandfather, too,” Louise added. “They inherited golden hands and were able to work on cars.” Charles Morris has since left auto repair to become a firefighter.
Louise and Wayne keep alive a dedication to the Studebaker that began in 1928, when Caralla began working, at $23 a week, as a parts boy at a large Studebaker warehouse in Manhattan, where he and his colleagues used roller skates to cover the distances in the huge building.
This was a year after the 1927 introduction of a couple of important Studebakers: The President, which bowed as the top nameplate and survived until 1942 (a 1928 model featured Studebaker’s first 8-cylinder engine); and the Erskine, named for Albert Russel Erskine, company president from 1915 to 1933, which also was introduced as a 1927, but was never profitable. A larger version-the Dynamic Erskine-was introduced in 1930 and later renamed Studebaker Six, which enjoyed some success.
Caralla moved up quickly at Studebaker, shedding his roller skates to take a job waiting on customers at the counter. Months later he was managing the warehouse.
In the summer of 1944, Caralla bought A&M, a licensed Studebaker repair facility near Fordham University in the Bronx. He stayed at that location until he closed his service operation.
“We were busy all the time,” he had said. “We worked evenings, weekends and holidays.”
According to Louise, Caralla drove every Studebaker made from the mid-1920s until 1966, the last model year. By then the carmaker had produced more than 4 million vehicles, an estimated 37,000 of which are still in existence.
Caralla’s first was a 1925 Standard Six.
Though it looked like its predecessor, the Light Six, the new ER model had a slightly larger, higher-compression (4.5:1 compared with 8:1 in many of today’s cars) engine that could crank out 50 horsepower, as compared to the 35 to 40 h.p. common in those days.
Wayne Morris says the family still has Caralla’s collection of Studebakers and Packards (Packard bought Studebaker in 1954 and the two money-losing operations became Studebaker-Packard Corp.), including a 1963 Studebaker Lark; 1965 Studebaker Daytona; 1963 Station Wagon; 1962 Studebaker Lark and a 1955 Packard Clipper.
Another collector, Ray Windecker, a retired Ford Motor Co. employee, worked at Studebaker (which was founded in South Bend in 1902 to produce electric cars) until it went out of business in 1966. He is restoring a 1953 Studebaker Champion Regal coupe from the ground up in his Livonia, Mich., garage. He said the work would not be possible without A&M.
Windecker recently suffered a setback when UPS lost a base for a rare sideview mirror he was shipping to a plating company after spending untold hours on the project. “It was a beautiful Raymond Loewy compressed-cone design,” he said, mournfully.
Besides being a supplier to collectors around the world, Caralla also was active until his death in the Studebaker Drivers Club, which numbers 12,000 members and is open to Studebaker owners and fans. He founded it, along with Harry Barnes, on Christmas Eve 1962 in Caralla’s garage.
Larry Swanson of Oswego, is the editor/publications director for the club, a job that has taken him to some exotic places, including Launceston, Tasmania, in 1991, with the Australia chapter.
“Forty-nine cars were judged at a park on the Tamar River,” he said. “Twenty-two Americans attended that meet, including (a couple) from California, who delivered a Studebaker to an Australian buyer in Tasmania for the gathering.”
Windecker doesn’t think it odd that Studebakers have found favor Down Under. “There are 900 Studes still on the road in Australia,” said Windecker, who retired from crunching numbers at Ford a couple of years ago. “They were good, strong, rugged vehicles.”
And, he said, they were readily available with right-hand drive. “Any number of right-hand drive cars have been made in the U.S. over the years since the early days of the industry. In fact, many of the first models built for this country were right-drive cars.”
Studebaker kept producing them for export up until 1966, Windecker added.
“I’ve been researching two groups totaling 96 (right-hand drive) cars that were shipped in crates and assembled in New Zealand during the last years of Studebaker production-1963-1966,” Swanson said.
Swanson, a founding member of the Antique Studebaker Club, a smaller group that focuses on older models, said Studebaker owners and club members he has met in both hemispheres reflect the people for whom they were built. “The product was a good value, it was affordable and owners tended to be middle-class, hard-working folks who liked to fix their own cars,” he said.
Wayne Morris can attest to the enduring popularity of his grandfather’s beloved cars.
“I have four or five Studebakers here right now,” he said. “The earliest is a 1955, but I can work on any year. We average about three Studebakers a month.”
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For more information on the Studebaker Drivers Club, contact Larry Swanson at P.O. Box 1040, Oswego, Ill., 60543, 708-554-2899.
