Albert Russel Erskine

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Albert Russel Erskine (January 24, 1871 – July 1, 1933) was an American businessman. Born in Huntsville, Alabama, he worked in a number of manufacturing industries before joining the Studebaker motor car manufacturing firm in 1911. He served as Studebaker's President from 1915 until it the firm encountered severe financial problems in 1933, when he committed suicide by shooting himself. He is buried at the Maple Hill Cemetery in Huntsville.

During his period of office at Studebaker, he encouraged the firm towards the production of small, sporty but economical cars on the European model, in particular the Erskine series. He also wrote a history of the firm. His downfall lay in his failure to cut production and costs quickly in response to the slump of 1929 and 1930, which led to an unsurmountable cash flow crisis.

In addition to his business work, Erskine served on the Board of Trustees of the University of Notre Dame, where his son Albert, Jr. studied. The university awarded him an honorary LL.D. in 1924. He took a strong interest in college football (a later Studebaker brand, the Rockne, was named after Notre Dame's football coach of the time), and initiated the Albert Russell Erskine Award for the best team of the year. The winner was chosen by a panel whose methods are, in essence, still used to select the champion team. He was instrumental in a grant of $10,000 that the Studebaker Corporation made to Harvard University in 1926, to set up the Albert Russell Erskine Bureau for Street Traffic Research, which remained active through much of the 1930s.