skip this if you aren't into trivia & lore.......there are several versions of this, but the basic plot is correct:
For those who don't know, Studebaker was formed in 1852.....was the largest vehicle manufacturer in the world by the 1880s (making carriages, wagons, harnesses, etc) and with sales offices worldwide was well-positioned to go into automobiles.......in fact was one of the largest car makers in the 1900's-20s. The Great Depression knocked them out for a while - they recovered - but so diminished that they couldn't maintain the same level of engineering & marketing expertise so their growth stopped which brought about their eventual decline as their scale of operations couldn't compete with the Big 3.
Even so, they were a major supplier of WWII materiel, and in fact their best sales year was 1950 (the bullet nose).....hard to believe that their death plunge came about so rapidly......busted by 1954 and they managed to drag Packard down with them.
Following the killing of Packard, they embarked on a mad scramble to diversify: so when the '59 Lark was a hit (it cost virtually nothing to build as it was just a '53 Stude with the ends cut off) the profits went into buying unrelated companies rather than improving the auto product/facilities. and so it went: an outmoded product year-after-year with sales well below breakeven......but the non-auto divisions of the corp made money and at some point, management wanted to deep-six the losing auto division.
one of the difficulties of going out of the car business is honoring all the contracts you're bound by. For instance, Stude still had about 1100 dealers to whom they had to supply cars to sell......fail to supply the cars and the corporation was contract bound to buy-back all inventory, parts, tools, signs, etc. No problem when you stop making DeSotos - given them Chryslers to sell. But for an independent, another ball game. Hence, Studebaker-Packard became the first formal importer of Mercedes cars to the US so they could supply Benz's to dealers when there were no more Packards.
So Studebaker faced the same situation in the mid 60's when they wanted to stop Stude production - what to supply the dealers to sell so they can't sue us? At that time, the Japanese car makers were looking for ways to enter the North American market.......set up American import arms? or have an American company import and sell them? maybe even manufacture Japanese cars in America (what a crazy idea).
So Stude actively investigated the idea of either importing Japanese cars, or convert some Stude factories to assembling Japanese-designed cars (whether sold under Stude or Japanese name).
And to investigage/negotiate with the Japanese companies, Stude hired a law firm......discusssions progressed.......the head attorney goes to Japan to meet personally with Toyoda.......almost a done deal, except for a breach of ettiquette when he also called on Nisan. deal off with both. He reported back to Stude that the Japanese products would not be accpetable to Americans - forget it. Meanwhile he invested heavily in forming a new company, Toyota of N. America which began importing the cars. Oh, the guy was an ex politico by the name of Richard Nixon.
So - how the tables have turned.......how differently things could have been. BTW, since Stude lost the Toyota deal, they signed with Auto Union instead and started importing those popular DKW's. But that's how Audi got their foot in the door.