By Lloyd Green Jr.
This article appeared in the COLUSA COUNTY PIONEER REVIEW, vol. 18, issue 38 on September 19,2025.
Story submitted by Jack L. who owns a 1953 Studebaker Commander.
Arbuckle, CA. Saturday began like any other late-summer morning in Arbuckle, quiet streets and a faint hum of almond harvesters shaking their crop. The sound of engines broke the stillness. One by one, gleaming Studebakers rolled into town, their polished chrome catching the sun as they lined up along 5th Street. They had come not just to mark International Drive Your Studebaker Day, but to honor a place woven deep into the town’s past: Atran’s Garage, once the oldest Studebaker dealership.
At 204 5th Street, the façade still bears the weight of its history. In 1889, when Arbuckle was still more farm town than crossroads, Alex Atran opened a blacksmith shop and livery stable on the site. That same year, he became a dealer for Studebaker wagons. When the company expanded into automobiles, the Atran family followed. For the next 75 years, until Studebaker folded in 1964, Arbuckle residents could buy one of those cars without leaving town.
In the early days, selling cars was not simply handing over the keys. Dealers were called brokers, and they often taught buyers how to drive. Picking up cars meant long days by ferry and dirt road to San Francisco, crawling along at 25 miles an hour, returning home with orders filled. By the 1930’s automobiles arrived by rail, a sign that Arbuckle was no longer so distant.
Studebaker prided itself on quality, but it came at a cost. In the 1920’s, when a Ford or Chevrolet could be had for under $800, a Studebaker cost at least $1,500. Arbuckle residents bought them anyway. The Atran dealership sold roughly 2,500 Studebakers during its run, along with Chevrolets, International trucks, Oliver tractors, and even Packards for a brief span.
Saturday began like any other late-summer morning in Arbuckle, quiet streets and a faint hum of almond harvesters shaking their crop. The sound of engines broke the stillness. One by one, gleaming Studebakers rolled into town, their polished chrome catching the sun as they lined up along 5th Street. They had come not just to mark International Drive Your Studebaker Day, but to honor a place woven deep into the town’s past: Atran’s Garage, once the oldest Studebaker dealership.
At 204 5th Street, the façade still bears the weight of its history. In 1889, when Arbuckle was still more farm town than crossroads, Alex Atran opened a blacksmith shop and livery stable on the site. That same year, he became a dealer for Studebaker wagons. When the company expanded into automobiles, the Atran family followed. For the next 75 years, until Studebaker folded in 1964, Arbuckle residents could buy one of those cars without leaving town.
In the early days, selling cars was not simply handing over the keys. Dealers were called brokers, and they often taught buyers how to drive. Picking up cars meant long days by ferry and dirt road to San Francisco, crawling along at 25 miles an hour, returning home with orders filled. By the 1930’s automobiles arrived by rail, a sign that Arbuckle was no longer so distant.
Studebaker prided itself on quality, but it came at a cost. In the 1920’s, when a Ford or Chevrolet could be had for under $800, a Studebaker cost at least $1,500. Arbuckle residents bought them anyway. The Atran dealership sold roughly 2,500 Studebakers during its run, along with Chevrolets, International trucks, Oliver tractors, and even Packards for a brief span.
The Studebaker gathering on September 13th brought those stories back into focus. About a dozen cars lined 5th Street, their chrome and curves reminders of a different time. Members of the Karel Staple Chapter affixed a Studebaker emblem to the headstone of Stanley and CeCelia Atran at the Arbuckle Cemetery, connecting memory to stone. Francee joined them in touring the remodeled building, pointing out where her father’s office once stood, where the showroom hosted conversations and deals.
To the club, it was celebration of a brand. To Arbuckle, it was a reminder of how a single business tied together families, roads, and decades. For Francee, it was both personal and communal. She remembered attending a Studebaker dinner in Sacramento in the 1970’s, when her father was honored as the oldest dealer.
“I didn’t realize how much it meant to everybody,” Francee said. “Because I am from the small town of Arbuckle, I thought Studebakers were just here. At that dinner, I understood they were everywhere.”
In Arbuckle, the cars were everywhere too. Generations of families bought them at Atran’s, and people like Shirley Griffin, now deceased, who once pumped gas at the garage, built their first jobs around it.
Today, Arbuckle is not the same town that Alex Atran knew in 1889. Stores have closed, farms have modernized, and families have arrived. Yet the stories linger. Remembering how people lived, how they helped each other, and how a town shaped its own future one trade, one handshake, one car at a time.
