In 1950, Cincinnati, Ohio's Ed Robben bought Armbruster, a Fort Smith, Arkansas-based airport limousine maker. Stageway Coaches, a large Cincinnati-based distributor of Armbruster's products was purchased by Robben from Queen City Chevrolet in 1962.  Stageway relocated to Fort Smith and was now given exclusive rights to distribute Armbruster's coaches. Upon Dobben's death in 1966, Milt Earnhart, his son-in-law, assumed ownership, and combined the two operations renaming the firm Armbruster-Stageway Inc.

In 1973, Tom Earnhart - Milt's son and an a marketing genius - joined the firm after graduation from college and eventually assumed  control of the firm. Earnhart sold Armbruster-Stageway to Carmatex Inc. in January 1981 and a few months later purchased the assets and trade name of the now-defunct Superior Coach Co. from its parent company, Sheller-Globe. 

Earnhart then purchased the Sayers & Scovill business and trade name from Hess & Eisenhardt towards the end of the year and transferred all S&S production to Superior's Lima, Ohio facility which was run by Darrel Metzger, Superior's long-time funeral car and ambulance sales manager, and later on - its president. 

To further complicated matters, Earnhart merged with Northeast Ohio Axle in 1985 and the new firm NEOAX Inc, purchased Carmatex Inc., the same firm which had purchased Armbruster-Stageway from Earnhart just 4 years earlier. NEOAX Inc. (aka Earnhart) now owned Superior, Sayers & Scovill, Armbruster-Stageway (Carmatex), and Northeast Ohio Axle.

NEOAX sold off Armbruster-Stageway to Executive Coach Builders in 1989 but kept S&S and Superior, first renaming it S&S/Superior of Ohio, Inc., then NEOAX Inc. Superior Coaches Div. and finally Accubuilt Inc. in 1989.

During 1995, Accubuilt Inc. moved into a new purpose-built, 175,000-square-foot facility in Lima, Ohio. Accubuilt purchased the Eureka and Miller-Meteor trade names from CCE Inc. in 1999 and moved all Eureka and Miller Meteor manufacturing to the Lima plant. 

In August 2001, Accubuilt purchased the assets of Vartanian Industries, a small shuttle and wheelchair van converter and moved their operations to the Lima, plant.

Although the Miller-Meteor and Eureka names were recently retired, Accubuilt continues to manufacture limousines and professional vehicles for 3 distinct brand names: DeBryan, S&S (Sayers & Scovill) and Superior.

© 2004 Mark Theobald - Coachbuilt.com

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