Say what you will about the efficiency of the U.S. government and the slow-rolling wheels of justice, but things eventually get worked out.
Just this month the Justice Department filed to terminate a price-fixing judgment it won against … wait for it … Studebaker Corp.
On Halloween 1963, the department’s antitrust division filed a complaint against the carmaker — it ended production in 1966 — for fixing prices and allocating markets for motor oil additives, including STP oil treatment.
In 1965, the company settled the complaint, agreeing to stop fixing prices and stop limiting who its oil and fuel additive distributors could sell to. This year, the antitrust division is cleaning house, in a sense; clearing out 19 legacy antitrust judgments “that no longer serve their original purpose,” including the 55-year-old case against Studebaker from the U.S. District Court for Nebraska.
Studebaker had acquired STP earlier that decade, and in 1963 placed racing figure turned pitchman extraordinaire Andy Granatelli as its head. Granatelli went on to make STP with its red oval a household name.
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