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Serial Number Page Note: This information was assembled and presented in the E-M-F Registry newsletter "The Hyphens" (Volume 1, Issue 2, September 2003). If you are an E-M-F, Flanders or Everitt owner and are not getting "The Hyphens" twice a year, please take the time to register with the E-M-F Registry. You can either select the green link here and fill out the form or send me an email with the same information. When I first bought my E-M-F, the first thing I wanted to know was what year is it? Thanks to the help of many people, I was able to determine that the car was a 1912 based on certain attributes of the car. But the next step for me was to determine if the serial numbers on both the engine and the body lined up, but how do you do that on an E-M-F? It was easy when I wanted to do the same thing for my Model T. I was able to track the engine serial number down to the day. But what about the E-M-F? Well, in the months that followed the purchase of the E-M-F and starting the E-M-F Homepage, several people provided me with serial number information from several different sources. The purpose of this article is to summarize and present the information I have received and is not intended to be the end-all be-all of serial number information. Hopefully it will help to aid in interpreting the information. Of course it is understood that engines could be changed over the years and that engines may not have been put into chassis right away. Richard Quinn, the editor of the Studebaker review, and several other people, sent the first document to me. It is a copy of a document distributed by the Studebaker Corporation dated May 16th, 1918 listing all Studebaker Serial numbers beginning with the 1909 E-M-F 30. The data for the E-M-F 30 and the Flanders 20 is shown in Table 1.
Some interesting things can be observed in this data. Some of the serial numbers overlap; such is the case with the serial number range for the E-M-F for 1910 and 1912. How do you interpret this information? I am not sure. A note on the letter that this information came from reads: Down to the numbers including the 1911 Studebaker 30 beginning with the serial 17,000 the records were not kept in such a way as to insure absolute correctness and it is possible that you will find an exception to the numbers given. However, beginning with the Studebaker 30 1912 models, serial #300,000, numbers are absolutely correct as given above. If I compare the data for my 1912 Demi Tonneau, it falls right into the range given for 1912 E-M-F. My engine number is 300,080 and my serial number is 44,822, but is it interesting that though my engine is very early in the number range, the serial number is not. Does this mean that engines sat around? Perhaps my engine is not original to the car? It is hard to say. Table 2 shows data from a separate sheet I also received and lists the serial number information from the Walkersville-Windsor production in Canada. This sheet appears to be from some research done by an enthusiast and not from factory records as the U.S information was.
Note that the number information for 1912 and 1913 are the same for the E-M-F 30. That is the way that the data was presented on the sheet I have. I do not know if this is an error from factory records or in the compilation of the sheet that I have. It is also interesting to note that the Canadian numbers for 1912 do not show the engine numbers in the 300,000 range. I also find it interesting that the numbers listed for the 1913 Flanders 20 show the engine numbers ranging from 72,750 to 201,700 while the serial numbers only range from 854 - 893. Were there a bunch of engines left over after production ceased?
As I stated earlier, this data is presented not as the end-all, be-all of serial number and engine number information. Perhaps someone reading this will have more accurate information they can provide me, or better yet, provide a better article on the serial and engine number information. Until better information presents itself, this data is presented for you to think about.
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