We were saving this tale for Halloween, but it was too good to keep any longer. Presenting one of the great stunts in automotive PR history: Studebaker’s monster 1931 President roadster. 

Okay, MCG is exaggerating a tiny bit. Studebaker’s giant 1931 President roadster wasn’t really 50 feet long. It was merely 41 feet long. And nearly 14 feet tall. And nearly 15 feet wide. And it weighed five and half tons and rode on a wheelbase of 27 feet. The steering wheel was 44 inches in diameter. The 22-member Studebaker company orchestra fit neatly in the passenger compartment with room to spare.

The leviathan roadster was fabricated in the spring of 1930 by several dozen of Studebaker’s skilled pattern makers under the direction of Paul Auman, head of the prototype department. Expert woodworkers, they carved the massive body mainly in white pine. Firestone supplied the wheels and tires, which were nearly seven feet tall and used electrical conduit to simulate wire wheel spokes.

Two and a half times larger than its production counterpart, more or less, the giant wooden Stude took three months to construct. An authentic replica in every other way, the giant had one deviation from stock: Instead of the President’s twin sidemount spare tires, it wore a single trunk-mounted spare. Apparently, the wooden plus-size model was built before the production car’s specifications were formalized.

Once completed, the giant was carted in pieces out to the Studebaker Proving Grounds, just outside the automaker’s home town of South Bend, Indiana. (Today the former test facility is Bendix Woods County Park.) Assembled and displayed on its own special plinth near the entrance, the roadster was originally finished in two-tone green, later a bright red. Numerous photo ops were arranged, and the car also appeared in a delightfully strange Studebaker promotional film entitled Wild Flowers (which has shown up on the internetand is well worth a look — see link below).

But alas, after a few years the President’s 1931 styling was looking quite dated, and the harsh Indiana winters had taken their toll on the all-wood construction. Obsolete and and in a sad state of deterioration, on May 17, 1936, the monster was doused with an accelerant and burned to the ground. However, this was not the end of Studebaker’s affection for enormous marketing props. The company created an even larger Land Cruiser sedan for the 1933-34 Chicago World’s Fair, A Century of Progress—but that’s another story.

Note: For a short, hilarious period film clip of the giant 1931 Studebaker, click here.