Have we got enough vehicles ?

[Ed Storey]

That is a good question but the spreadsheet of numbers cannot be looked at on its own as the acquisition of military vehicles would have been forecast and requested by the military as well as approved by treasury board. Finding out why the vehicles were ordered and subsequently disposed of is always the mystery.

[Grant Bowker]

The first thing that struck me was that there were more vehicles either undergoing repair or waiting for repair than were available for issue.

[Lang]

At that stage of the war it was not a matter of if but when it would end. A lot of orders were being cut back and personnel being released.

The Lend Lease agreement finalised only a few months after the war obviously was being worked on for much longer than that.

A part of the agreement stated all existing orders and contracts by Australia to USA had to be completed (to avoid sudden collapse of US industry overnight). I strongly suspect the Studebakers were caught up in that situation. "You may not need them now but you ordered them and the show will go on"

Just like the American aircraft industry kept churning out aircraft that made one flight to huge storage depots and were scrapped without a further flight.