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IF Egbert's $125,000-a-year Studebaker job is tough, he has all his life toughened himself for hard tasks. His father, a barber who tried to run a dance hall in Easton, Wash., was so poor that when the family house burned down, he moved his wife and two children into tents. "I stole coal from Northern Pacific railroad cars, and we ate plenty of stale bread with that old purple mold coming through," recalls Egbert. He went to Washington State on an athletic scholarship (state discus-throw record in 1937), but dropped out to work on the Grand Coulee Dam to support his family.
Egbert insists on knowing the basics of whatever he is doing. At Boeing Airplane Co., as assistant superintendent of production on B-17s, he studied engineering so he could talk a mechanic's language. During World War II, when he went into the Marines as an Air Transport Service officer, he learned to fly to know a pilot's problems. After the war he went to McCulloch Corp., helped build it up from a tiny company housed in Quonset huts. He took his wife on outboard races on the rough Colorado River through the Grand Canyon ("How can you" be in a business without knowing the product?").
Studebaker has shelved its plans for a four-cylinder Lark, but Egbert is working with Raymond Loewy & William Snaith, Inc. to produce a restyled six-cylinder model by 1963 and a completely redesigned 1964 Lark. To make up the costs of his program and show a profit by next year, he figures he must get 3% of the auto market v. 1.6% last year.
At the Studebaker-Packard annual meeting next week, after such a short time in office, about all Egbert will be able to offer stockholders is his own enthusiasm. But there is a lot of that.