Owen Ray Skelton  Skelton was born on February 9, 1886, his family living in Edgerton, Ohio, at the time. His parents were James G. Skelton and Sophia Skelton. James was a shopkeeper selling horse harness and saddlery, and the future automotive engineer worked as a shop apprentice in his youth. Eschewing horses, he graduated from Ohio State University with a degree in mechanical engineering. From 1905 until 1907, Skelton's first automotive job was with the Pope-Toledo automobile factory in Toledo, Ohio, noted for their cutting-edge gasoline-powered engine technology. Skelton advanced to the design drafting department at Detroit's Packard Motor Car Company. As he gained experience and then expertise, Skelton simultaneously gained the reputation of being a design analyst who understood the entire transmission of a car, and a master specialist in rear axles and gear boxes. Moving to a startup firm, Skelton was a ground-floor partner in design for Benham from 1914 to 1916. Although the Benham automobile failed to sell, its construction appealed to another automaker also interested in streamlined design, Studebaker. The South Bend firm's vice president and chief engineer, Frederick Morrell Zeder, offered Skelton an engineering position. Skelton accepted Studebaker's pay offer of 58 U.S. cents per hour. The money-losing Studebaker needed to produce a speedy design for a new, inexpensive, mass-market automobile that could compete with the two new automobile conglomerates, Ford Motor Company and General Motors. The struggling firm set up a design shop in Newark, and gave a relatively free hand to the shop's three principals, Zeder, Skelton, and Carl Breer. The threesome became known as "The Three Musketeers" for their pathbreaking design work for the 1918 Studebaker. Pioneer design engineer Skelton's Newark residence, the Robert Treat Hotel, survives. In 1921 Zeder, Skelton, Breer, and several associates left Studebaker to start an independent Newark automobile design-and-engineering firm, "ZSB Engineering." The luxury-oriented Daniels Motor Company hired ZSB to design their 1922 V-8, but the high-end car listed for $7,450 (in 1922 dollars), a prohibitive price for that day. Later in 1922, ZSB turned their eyes toward the mass market, hired by Billy Durant on a motor design for the Flint automobile.