In its heyday, the automotive industry was so concentrated in Connersville that the city qualified as the manufacturing capital of the world.
The Studebaker Manufacturing Company may be considered the godfather of Indiana auto makers, a cadre that once included such names as Stutz, Cord, and Duesenberg. The company was started by a family of Pennsylvania Germans, who set up a blacksmithing shop at the corner of Michigan and Jefferson Streets in downtown South Bend in 1852. Soon, the company was producing the horse-drawn carriages that delivered a nation of pioneers to their new life out West.
When you think of the early automobile, you likely picture Henry Ford, the Model T, and Detroit, but did you know that Indiana also played a prominent role in the early automobile industry?