Just A Car Guy: Studebaker briefly tied STP into its advertising as an abbreviation for “Studebaker Tested Products”, it went on to be more famous than Studebaker, who was quickly forgotten

Wednesday, October 10, 2018

Studebaker briefly tied STP into its advertising as an abbreviation for “Studebaker Tested Products”, it went on to be more famous than Studebaker, who was quickly forgotten

how in the hell did the employees survive the flip flip flippety flip of the company for profit?

In 1961, the STP company was acquired by the Studebaker-Packard Corporation.

Studebaker bowed out, STP was spun off into a publicly traded company in 1969
In 1976, it was acquired by Esmark
which itself was purchased by Beatrice Foods
Beatrice sold STP to Union Carbide
STP, Prestone and Simoniz (UC companies) became the First Brands company
was purchased by Clorox in 1998.
In 2010, Clorox sold ArmorAll and STP to Avista Capital Partners.
It named the business Armored AutoGroup.

Thats 9 times it was bought, sold, changed ownership

In 1976, STP paid a $500,000 civil penalty over claims, as it had no scientific backing for certain statements, and making false claims.

In 1995, STP paid $888,000 to settle Federal Trade Commission charges of false advertising

When STP hit the market, it competed for customers with similar products by Rislone, Bardahl, Wynn's, Miracle Power and others.

So, really, why didn't Consumer Reports, or Hot Rod magazine, or anyone else test all these products and determine is any of them were effective, lived to the marketing hype from their own advertising, or out performed the competition?

Well, Hot Rod was giving away stickers in the magazine, opting to profit from association with a winning company instead of benefitting it's readers and subscribers. Reminder that magazines are a profit making organization that owe their readers nothing, and won't get into truth telling that might intrude on profits.

STP hired Richard Petty with $250,000 and the promise of lots of advertising, but, the agreement had one huge problem to deal with 1st... the color Petty Blue. STP wanted it's red color on the car, and Petty insisted that his trademark blue, be on the car. That blue was the result of Lee Petty telling his boys Richard and Maurice to paint his race car, and they had some white, and some blue, but not enough of either, so they mixed the two together and bingo, Petty Blue.

Andy Granatelli met with Richard and a compromise was reached that was a more famous racing car paint scheme than either all blue or all red.