Studebaker M Series Truck

Studebaker M Series Truck

Studebaker

Production1938–1949
Engine169 CID I6 / 226 CID I6

Among the 26 Studebaker entries in the MotorJury library, the Studebaker M Series Truck holds its own page in a catalogue built to record every car ever made, from series production to one-off concepts. The record places its introduction in 1938. The photography on this page is hotlinked from Wikimedia Commons under an open licence, with the photographer credited on every frame.

The era it was born into

To read the Studebaker M Series Truck properly it helps to place it in its decade. The 1930s were the streamline decade, when aerodynamics entered body design, independent suspension spread, and grand-prix engineering began flowing into road cars even as the Depression thinned the industry. Any car launched into that world was shaped by it — by what materials, engineering and regulation allowed, and by what buyers of the day demanded. Its direct contemporaries in this catalogue, introduced within three years of it, include the Volkswagen Volkswagen Beetle, the Ford Lincoln Continental, the Cadillac Cadillac Sixty Special — the cars a buyer of the period would actually have cross-shopped.

The numbers, read closely

On paper, the Studebaker M Series Truck reads like this: the record lists its engine as 169 CID I6 / 226 CID I6; kerb weight is recorded at 1259-3050 kg; the layout is Front engine, rear-wheel drive / four-wheel drive. Every figure above is a manufacturer specification carried by the Wikipedia infobox or the open Wikidata record for this model — nothing on this page is estimated, and where a source is silent the row simply does not appear.

Its place in the Studebaker story

Within Studebaker's own catalogue the Studebaker M Series Truck sits alongside the Studebaker Avanti, the Studebaker Big Six, the Studebaker Champion, the Studebaker Commander. The record names the Studebaker Coupe Express as its predecessor and the Studebaker 2R/3R as its successor, fixing its place in the model line's chronology.

How this catalogue works

This library is generated, verified and rebuilt from the open record on every deploy. The catalogue skeleton comes from Wikidata, specifications from Wikipedia's infoboxes under CC BY-SA, photography from Wikimedia Commons under each file's own licence, and the ownership data from United States federal safety records. Nothing is written by hand and nothing is invented: every fact on this page traces to a public source, and every page is rebuilt nightly as those sources improve. Errors in the source record will appear here too — and disappear the night the source is corrected.

Why concepts and prototypes are in the library

Most car databases stop at series production. This one deliberately does not, because concept cars, racing specials and cancelled prototypes are where the industry thinks out loud — the ideas tested in public years before they reach a showroom. Holding them beside the production cars they inspired makes the lineage legible: nearly every landmark road car in this library has a concept ancestor somewhere in the catalogue, and the connections run through the era links on every page.

From catalogue to ownership

A specification sheet is only half a car's story. The other half — what breaks, what it costs to keep, which years to avoid — lives in MotorJury's ownership database, computed nightly from federal complaint and recall records and EPA economy data. Where the Studebaker M Series Truck was sold in the United States, its model years carry full ownership verdicts there.

Specifications

LayoutFront engine, rear-wheel drive / four-wheel drive
Body style2-door pickup
Kerb weight1259-3050 kg
Wheelbase2847-4956 mm
PredecessorStudebaker Coupe Express
SuccessorStudebaker 2R/3R
Catalogue IDQ3976254

Specifications come from the Wikipedia infobox for this model (CC BY-SA) and the open Wikidata record, and are shown only where a source actually carries them — nothing here is estimated. Figures are manufacturer specifications, not measured results.

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What it costs to run

Ownership verdicts are computed from NHTSA complaint and recall records plus EPA economy data, re-priced for your country. Verdicts are published per model year as the data is ingested — browse them live, or open the true-cost calculator to price any year yourself.

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