"One of the biggest news stories in Wisconsin is how the state’s economy is changing,” wrote H. Nicholas Pabst, editor and publisher of Corporate Report Wisconsin in September 1985. “Daily we hear stories about what’s happening to business and mostly the news is bad. If it’s not bad, it’s often confusing. Leaders can’t agree on what the facts are, let alone agree on what the future holds.”

Pabst acknowledged that such an environment was hardly conducive to starting a new business, yet it was a challenge he was willing to accept.

“But Corporate Report Wisconsin Inc. is born of the simple notion that a lot of people are wrong about the state’s economy,” he wrote. “Wisconsin is a better place to live and do business than many people are willing to admit.”

If that notion was correct, he thought that a simple bit of logic could provide the fuel for a statewide business magazine. “If so many people have reached the wrong conclusions about the state’s economy, then maybe what’s needed is a thoughtful, in-depth monthly business magazine to help sort things out,” he decided.

Corporate changes

The magazine’s corporate profile started with a question: “Would anyone pay $60,000 for an automobile that critics have called underpowered and hard to handle? Before answering, consider that the car doesn’t get very good gas mileage and includes some totally non-functional features that are just for show.”

Adjusted for inflation, that would be $120,000 in today’s dollars … but that question led to a profile on Excalibur Automobile Corp. At the time, the company was producing a mere 250 Excaliburs at its West Allis plant and had rolled out its Signature Series Excalibur Phaeton in 1984. Only 50 of those automobiles had been built and they sold out in a single night.

The first Excalibur, a brainchild of Milwaukee design consultant Brooks Stevens, appeared at the New York Auto Show in 1964.
According to the article, Stevens had designed the car as a “show stopper” for the Studebaker display. With the assistance of his sons, David and William (Steve), he built the car in just eight weeks.

The problem: Just before the show, Studebaker announced it would no longer build cars in the United States, and the Stevenses found themselves without a sponsor. They decided to show the car on their own, and they dubbed it the “Excalibur” after a team of racing cars the elder Stevens had designed and raced in the 1950s.

As expected, the car turned out to be a hit, not only attracting attention at the show but also orders for more cars. The Stevens brothers agreed to continue limited production and put a $6,000 price tag ($41,600 in today’s dollars) on each one, establishing SS Automobile Inc., and then later changing the name to Excalibur Automotive Corp.

In 1985, the company was run by the Stevens brothers and they had nurtured the original concept of the car through five series, each of which ran five years and fewer than 3,000 Excalibur cars had been built at that time.

Unlike the Big Three automakers of the time, the Stevens brothers worked under a different philosophy, actually slowing the production line to a rate that helped ensure product quality. The 125 employees at the West Allis plant crafted each car by hand, including hand-bolting the frames and ensuring that each of the 3,700 or so parts was assembled correctly.

Excalibur owners were part of — and still remain — an exclusive international group that at one time included such notable celebrities as Dean Martin, Gary Cooper, Jean Harlow, Ronald Reagan, Cher and Sonny Bono, Liberace, Rod Stewart and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Phyllis Diller owned four.

So what happened to Excalibur after our profile ran? The company found itself in Chapter 11 soon after, and Excalibur was sold to Henry Warner, president of Acquisition Company of Wisconsin. Production resumed, but not at previous levels.

It was a dark chapter in the company’s history, with allegations that Warner was incorporating dubious business practices in the Excalibur production, including the use of used parts and a failure to meet federal passive restraint requirements.

The company again went bankrupt in 1990 and was sold to two more investors in succession. The second investor, German Udo Geitlinger and his son, Jens, diversified the business significantly, attaching the Excalibur name to a number of products and diluting its brand value in the process.

But like the mythical Excalibur of the Arthurian tale, the company was simply waiting for its proverbial “Lady of the Lake,” and she arrived in 2003.

“Excalibur was abandoned in receivership,” says Alice Preston, owner of Camelot Classic Cars and the Excalibur Automobile Corp. in Milwaukee. “The lien holders contacted me and asked me if I wanted to buy it.”

Preston had been involved with Excalibur since its birth in 1964 and she’s nurtured a clear passion for the car since then.

“I bought the assets for a number of reasons, primarily to keep someone else from buying it and using the name,” she says.
As the current owner of Excalibur, Camelot Classic Cars owns all of the renderings and molds from the company, making it the go-to source for current Excalibur owners, who often struggle to find an appropriate auto repair shop to provide necessary maintenance and repair.

But the efforts in Milwaukee have been worth it, particularly for those who treasure their vehicles.

“It’s a passion, trying to keep the name alive,” agrees Gordy Frank, who stared at Excalibur right out of high school and returned to the company in 2004 when Preston needed a little bit of extra help.

“Alice had been contacted by someone who owned the Excalibur we built for Jackie Gleason,” says Frank, who remembers building the original car back in 1974. “Jackie had us build him an Excalibur with a yellow body and black fenders, with wicker accents and a gold hood ornament.”

The then-current owner of the car had been in an accident, and the insurance company was going to declare a total loss. The woman who owned the car had tangled with a cement truck.

“The funny thing was that the cement truck also had to be towed,” says Frank. “That car was built like a tank.”

Camelot Classic Cars and the Excalibur Automobile Corp. were able to get the car back on the road.

Currently, Camelot Classic Cars and the Excalibur Automobile Corp. are focused on providing necessary maintenance and repair services to the select club of Excalibur owners around the world, which number less than 3,500. The company also helps existing owners sell their Excaliburs as well as other classic cars.

Eventually, Preston hopes to resume Excalibur production in Milwaukee, re-introducing the high standards and quality that the brand was originally known for during the Stevens era.

Perpetual trends

The mid-1980s also signaled a time of evolution. Gary A. Marsack, a senior member and vice president of Linder & Marsack, wrote about the decline in union membership and presence.

“Thirty years ago [1955], 35 percent of all American workers were organized,” he wrote. “Five years ago [1980] it was 23 percent, and today [1985] it is less than 19 percent.”

In contrast, according to the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2008 union members accounted for 12.4 percent of employed wage and salary workers, up from 12.1 percent a year earlier.

Marsack noted in his “Executive Insights: Unions” that if unions were to survive into the coming decades, to make up for losses from natural attrition, permanent layoffs and decertification, labor needed to attract 450,000 workers a year to stay at the then-current member-ship levels.

“Membership has dropped below 20 million for the first time since the early 1960s,” he told readers.

In 2008, the number of workers belonging to a union rose by 428,000 to 16.1 million, an increase over the previous year but still far from the levels report in Corporate Report Wisconsin in 1985.

Marsack also reported on the influx of women into the workforce during the mid-1980s.

“[It] has created an untapped source for potential organizing,” he wrote. “Although one-third of all union members and one-half of organized professionals are women, labor has recognized that the so-called “pink collar workers in relatively low-paying jobs represent a gold mine for new membership.”

In 1985, Corporate Report Wisconsin also reported on Wisconsin’s transitional economy. Laura Strain of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce said that “Wisconsin, particularly the southeastern part, is moving into a transitional economy, though … the horse Wisconsin should continue to ride, at least for awhile, is manufacturing.”

Manufacturing was expected to play a major role in job creation in the state, but that “new jobs will probably be more technical than in the past. Button-pushing will replace a lot of hands-on assembly and menial labor.”

Forward Wisconsin had been established a year earlier, and then-president Patrick LeSage said the organization had already identified its target industries: Plastics, metalworking machinery such as robotics and computing machinery. Other target industries included those that matched Wisconsin’s inherent strengths — natural resources, a skilled and available workforce and excellent public services — including food processing, specialty cheese, biotechnology and medical equipment. Service industries that required a Midwestern base, such as insurance companies, were also part of the focus.

In terms of predictions, Management Consultant John Roethle predicted that “in 10 years, 30 to 50 percent of employment will be new employment or in forms that do not exist today. It will come from companies that now employ 500 people or less.” Jay Walters, then president of First Bank Milwaukee, predicted that “corporate growth in Wisconsin will be led by companies that have annual sales of $5 million to $100 million.”

But we leave the last word to Sheldon Lubar, who seemed to have one of the most visionary statements of the first issue. Lubar had recently taken a trip to China in search of venture capital opportunities as part of a delegation of local business leaders and representatives from UW-Milwaukee.

The article noted that Lubar was disappointed, but did see a number of possibilities and had an experience “like none I’d ever had before.”

Lubar saw “China as a land of opportunity — but not for venture capital,” an area where he was recognized as one of Wisconsin’s leading experts.

“They’re just not ready for that yet,” he reported in September 1985.

Instead, Lubar believed there were continuing opportunities for joint ventures between American firms and the Chinese government.

“There is a definite opportunity there,” he added. “But it’s important to be aware that nothing is easy. You’re talking about a country that is more than 10,000 miles away … a government that has a huge bureaucracy … but there are opportunities if you’re strong and patient enough.”

Even taking Lubar’s comments in their historical context – his visit occurred at a time when China’s political future was unsettled, particularly with the aging Deng Xiaoping heading the country – still offers value to those who are attempting trade today.

The country’s “potentially colossal markets and possibly huge savings in labor costs” as well as “China’s desperate need for what American firms can offer” were enough to keep China in Lubar’s sights in the long term, despite the challenges the country posed.

“You have to remember this is an authoritarian type of government … and it’s going to stay that way,” he cautioned. “[But] China is eager for modern management techniques, technology and equipment.”

By Laurie Arendt

Laurie Arendt is editor of CRW. She can be reached at crweditor@crwmag.com

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