Stutz: From Indy Podiums to Diesel Trucks

17.08.2026

The first Stutz finished eleventh in the inaugural Indianapolis 500. It wasn’t a victory, but it was enough to coin the slogan “The Car That Made Good in a Day.” That early grit fueled the Bearcat. Alongside the Mercer Raceabout, Stutz helped define the American sports car. Big engines. Minimal bodywork. Easy to race. Privateers and factory teams alike took the Bearcat to the track, cementing a reputation for performance that stuck long after the racing stripes faded.

Volume was never the goal. Stutz built 266 cars in its first full year, 1912. By 1917, that number had climbed to just 2,207. But by the early 1920s, the company was building its own powertrains. They offered a massive 361-cubic-inch side-valve four making 88 bhp. There was also an overhead-valve six rated at 75 bhp. In 1924, that six got a bump to 80 bhp and 268 cid for the Speedway Six model. The four-cylinder was dropped the next year.

By the mid-1920s, Stutz design looked dated. Enter Frederick E. Moskovics. The European-born executive took the presidency in 1925. He did for Stutz what Zora Arkus-Duntov would later do for Corvette: inject European engineering to sharpen handling and performance.

The Vertical Eight and Safety Stutz Models

Moskovics introduced the “Safety Stutz” line the following year. These were beautiful open and closed models powered by Stutz’s first eight-cylinder engine. It was an inline design with a single overhead camshaft. Dual ignition meant two plugs per cylinder. Stutz called it the Vertical Eight.

The engine displaced 289 cid and made 92 bhp. It became the heart of every Stutz through 1935, with one exception. The 1929-30 Blackhawk line used an L-head Continental eight or an overhead-cam Stutz six. Base price was $2,395. That was “cheap” for Stutz. Sales hit just under 1,600 units. After 1930, the Blackhawk chassis served as the base for the brand’s most affordable models.

The Vertical Eight grew quickly. It moved to 298.6 cid in 1927. By 1929, it hit 322 cid and 113 bhp. Advertised horsepower stopped there, though actual output likely reached 140 bhp by decade’s end.

Stutz dominated AAA stock car racing in 1927. They gave Bentley a serious run at Le Mans in 1928. The chassis engineering barely changed after 1929. Three wheelbases lasted until the end: 134.5 inches, 145 inches, and 127.5 inches after the Blackhawk died.

Superchargers and Twin-Cams

Stutz couldn’t afford a 12- or 16-cylinder engine. So they tried a supercharger instead. It lifted the Vertical Eight to 143 bhp. The blower was huge, mounted low in front of the radiator. Driven directly from the crankshaft, it was noisy. Carburetion was a nightmare.

Moskovics left in 1929. But the best was still coming. Stutz followed Duesenberg’s lead for 1931 with a new 32-valve twin-cam head. This design couldn’t fit the dual ignition of the old single-valve engine, now called the SV16. But better breathing gave the new DV32 engine 161 bhp at 3,900 rpm.

Stutz Cars in the 1930s: Poor Luxury Cars Sales, Stutz Moves to Truck-Making

Sales of luxury cars tanked. The market shifted. Stutz had to adapt. They moved into truck manufacturing. The Bearcat spirit remained, but the road ahead changed.

For more on defunct American cars:

AMC
Duesenberg
Oldsmobile
Plymouth
Studebaker
Tucker

The transition wasn’t smooth. Trucks required different engineering. Different customers. Different margins. But Stutz survived. Barely.

How does a brand built on racing glory pivot to workhorses? It’s a question that haunts every prestige marque facing extinction. Stutz didn’t just pivot. It fractured. The luxury segment vanished. The truck segment was a grind.

The Vertical Eight remained reliable. The DV32 was advanced. But advanced engines cost money. Buyers didn’t have money. The factory kept running. But the soul of the company? That was harder to define.

Did Stutz lose its way? Or did it simply change lanes? The trucks rolled out. Quietly. Efficiently. Not a single one shouted “Made Good in a Day.” They just worked.

And that might have been the real tragedy.

The Desperate Attempt at Affordability

Stutz saw the writing on the wall. Sales were sliding, and the Depression was deepening. To stop the bleeding, the company revived its six-cylinder lineup. These weren’t the high-performance monsters of the Roaring Twenties. They were budget-friendly compromises.

For 1931, they got the Stutz LA badge. It followed up in 1932 and 11933 as the Stutz LAA. You could buy a standard coupe or sedan. Or you could splurge on one of five semi-custom body styles. The price tag for the LA started at $1,995. The LAA dropped that to $1,620. That was cheap for Stutz. But was it enough?

Under the hood sat a confusing powerplant. It was essentially a Vertical Eight with two cylinders removed. This was the same 241.5 cubic inch single-cam engine found in the departed Blackhawk model. Power output was a meager 85 bhp.

Let’s look at the math. That engine had to push a vehicle weighing over 4,300 pounds. The result? The cars were sluggish. They were also sluggish in the marketplace. Stutz gave up on the six-cylinder strategy after 1933. The experiment failed.

The High-Buck Paradox

With the budget models gone, Stutz was left with only expensive cars. This reflected a no-compromise approach to sporty performance. But it also made Stutz an odd fish in the luxury pond. Standard body models cost between $3,000 and $4,000. That was a lot of money in the “hard times” of the early 1930s.

Yet, the company offered around 30 custom styles. These were built on the SV16 and DV32 chassis. High-end coachbuilders like LeBaron, Fleetwood, Rollston, Weymann, Brunn, Waterhouse, and Derham did the work.

Stutz had been using Weymann fabric bodies since 1928. These weren’t cloth. They were padded leatherette. The material was light, strong, and elastic. It absorbed road noise and shock better than steel. Repairs were easier too. But the bodies lacked longevity. Crash protection was poor. And many buyers hated the dull, pebbled finish. They looked dowdy.

Stutz tried to counter this with the Weymann Monte Carlo. It was a well-proportioned five-passenger four-door “sport” sedan. By 1932, you could get it in aluminum on the DV32 platform. The price was $4,895 complete.

The Bearcat Revival

Stutz also brought back the Bearcat name. They offered a boattailed speedster and a short chassis convertible coupe. Both were guaranteed for over 100 mph. That was a bold claim. It signaled that Stutz still wanted to be seen as a performance brand. But did anyone care about speed in a depression?

The DV32 and Financial Bleeding

The DV32 chassis debuted at the New York Auto Show in the winter of 1930-31. Prices were announced in late March 1931. Production started in July. Around that same time, Stutz reported net earnings of just $20,000 on gross sales of $100,000.

It was pitiful. But it was better than the red ink flowing since 1929.

Changes came for the 1932 models. The four-speed gearbox was replaced by a rugged three-speed synchronized unit. Freewheeling became an option. The hot-air manifold was swapped for a hot-water heating system. An oil cooler was added. A new trunk rack and dust valance were installed at the rear. Bodies were dropped down in a curving line to cover the frame. Single-bar bumpers replaced the old double-bar design.

Despite these updates, the losses mounted. Stutz lost $315,000 in fiscal 1932. The company continued to stumble with the same basic lineup of SV16s and DV32s. Little had changed.

The drain accelerated. Stutz lost half a million dollars in 1933. Another quarter-million vanished in 1934. These sums weren’t huge in the grand scheme of things. But for a small luxury manufacturer, they were fatal. The resources were already meager. There was no room for error.

The cars were beautiful. The engineering was sound. The market was broken. What happens when you build the

The Descent into Liquidation

It was a last-ditch effort, really. Management tried to bail out by pivoting to commercial vehicles. The Stutz Pak-Age-Car was born—a small delivery truck designed to keep the cash flowing. George H. Freers took the helm as chief engineer, pushing the project forward. By summer 1936, they had rolled out 28 of the 340 ordered units. It looked promising on paper. It didn’t work in reality.

The numbers just weren’t there.

In April 1937, Stutz threw in the towel and declared bankruptcy. It’s a curious footnote in automotive history: the balance sheet looked healthier than most failures. Assets stood at $1.2 million. Liabilities? Just $733,000. Technically solvent on paper. But cash flow is king, and Stutz had none left. Creditors couldn’t agree on how to restructure the debt, so the wheels started falling off faster.

The Final Chapter

The federal judge didn’t wait for consensus. He ordered a full liquidation of assets in April 1938. By summer, the process was done. The brand was effectively dead.

But the machinery lived on. Production of the Pak-Age-Car shifted to Auburn’s idle plant in Connersville. Diamond T Truck Company picked up the slack, handling sales and service for what remained of the Stutz commercial line. The nameplate vanished into the archives, but the trucks kept rolling.