Harold Sines Vance

Harold Sines Vance (22 August 1889 – 31 August 1959) was an American automobile company executive and government official, notable for being chairman (1935–1954) and president (1948–1954) of the Studebaker Corporation and for a four-year term on the Atomic Energy Commission, where he encouraged the industrial use of nuclear energy.

Biography Vance was born in the city of Port Huron, Michigan, in 1889. He achieved moderate grades in school and, having failed the entrance examination for West Point, he went to work briefly for his father's law partner whose death terminated the arrangement. In 1910, he obtained a job as a mechanic at the Port Huron branch of the E-M-F Company, which was being acquired by the Studebaker Corporation. He moved to the Detroit plant and was production vice-president in 1926 when he supervised the plant's closure and move to Studebaker's primary plant at South Bend, Indiana. By the time of the Great Depression, Vance was production vice president in the company at South Bend, working with Paul G. Hoffman who would later take charge of the Marshall Plan and the Ford Foundation.

A series of financial mistakes by Studebaker's long-serving president Albert Russel Erskine, led to his suicide and the corporation's insolvency in 1933. Vance and Paul G. Hoffman gained control of the company as receivers with Ashton G. Bean of the White Motor Company This disclosure led to the cancellation of a $100 million order for such trucks which had been placed with Studebaker. The reports attracted the attention of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who requested that Vance direct the mobilization process, however Vance declined.

In 1954, Studebaker was merged with Packard Motors Company and Vance left the corporation. A year later, in on October 31, 1955, Vance joined the United States Atomic Energy Commission, and worked there until his death on August 31, 1959.