Background
Harold Sines was born on August 22, 1890, in Port Huron, Michigan. He was the son of Samuel W. Vance, a lawyer and circuit court judge, and Carrie Sines.
Harold Sines was born on August 22, 1890, in Port Huron, Michigan. He was the son of Samuel W. Vance, a lawyer and circuit court judge, and Carrie Sines.
After his father's death when Harold was in his teens, Vance worked and read law with his father's partner, and sought unsuccessfully an appointment to West Point.
His real interest was in mechanical things, and in 1910 he took a job as a mechanic's apprentice at 15 cents an hour in the machine shop of the Everitt-Metzger-Flanders (EMF) Company in Port Huron. EMF was a combination of several small automobile and parts manufacturing firms, which in turn was absorbed into the Studebaker Corporation in 1912.
In the larger organization Vance rose rapidly because he showed a talent for resolving complicated problems and a willingness to make decisions. He became purchasing agent for Studebaker in 1915. He spent eight months in 1918 on a wartime assignment as production engineer with Bethlehem Steel and then returned to Studebaker as assistant to the president. In 1922, he was put in charge of export sales and a year later became general sales manager. Vance had thus compiled a record of competence in areas beyond his mechanical talents, but his principal interests and greatest skills continued to be in production and engineering.
Consequently, when Albert R. Erskine, president of Studebaker, reorganized the company in 1926 in order to carry out an ambitious program of expansion, he made Vance vice-president in charge of manufacturing. At this time Studebaker's prospects appeared bright. It was the country's third largest automobile manufacturer, although it would lose that position a year later when Chrysler acquired Dodge. However, Erskine's ambitions outran his judgment. He made unsound acquisitions, and he grossly underestimated the severity of the Great Depression. Studebaker went into receivership in 1933, and Erskine committed suicide.
The company would have gone out of business completely but for heroic efforts by Hoffman and Vance, who were made receivers. They did so well that Studebaker was again showing a profit by the end of 1933 and was discharged from receivership two years later. In the reconstituted company Hoffman became president and Vance chairman of the board. They worked in such close cooperation that it is impossible to assign credit to either one separately for the rehabilitation of Studebaker. Hoffman, as salesman and promoter, was more visible.
The Studebaker revival continued through World War II and for a few years afterward. The company was the first motor vehicle manufacturer to return to peacetime production, a feat that can certainly be attributed to Vance's talents. It came after a second intermission for government service; in World War II, he worked with the War Production Board. Vance became president of Studebaker in 1948, switching jobs with Hoffman when the latter took time off to administer the Marshall Plan. By 1950, the postwar seller's market for motor vehicles was gradually vanishing, and all the independent firms found their existence increasingly threatened. Their only solution was to merge in order to try to achieve the economies of scale that gave the "Big Three" their competitive advantage.
After a good deal of maneuvering, Studebaker finally merged with Packard in 1954 as the Studebaker-Packard Corporation. Vance became chairman of the executive committee of Studebaker-Packard, but he held this post for only a year. He appears to have consented to the mergeronly because of a catastrophic decline in Studebaker sales that began in 1953. In any case, he was becoming more involved in public service. In 1951, he became a lay trustee of the University of Notre Dame, which conferred an honorary LL. D. on him in 1954. From 1952 to 1955, he was consultant to the Office of Defense Mobilization, and in the latter year President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed him to the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) for what was supposed to be a five-year term. As a member of the AEC, Vance was very strongly interested in industrial applications of atomic energy and was a vigorous advocate of the development of nuclear power for the generation of electricity.
Just before his death he had exchanged letters with Carlos P. Romulo, then Philippine ambassador to the United Nations, regarding a grant to the Philippine Republic for the construction of a nuclear research reactor. Vance died in Washington, D. C.
In 1922, Vance married Agnes M. Monaghan. They had four children.