by John England
(Reprinted with permission from the author and Chicago Art Deco Society magazine)Just when it should have been trekking onward to bigger and better things, the Auburn Automobile Company was slipping into history. America was slowly but surely recovering from the Great Depression. Though unemployment still remained too high in the middle '30s, some automobile companies were rebounding slowly but steadily from the effects of the stock market crash of October 1929. Ford Motor Company, for example, in the '34 model year, sold approximately 200,000 more cars than it did in the previous year. But the economy still had a long way to go to achieve the level reached in 1929.
That's about the time the Auburn Automobile Co. reached the mountain top. The Great Depression walloped many a company, Auburn being one of them. By the mid-30s Auburn was sliding downward and operating in the red.
Designer Gordon Buehrig and others formed a design team, including engineers Herbert Snow, George Kublin and Ted Allen. They were permitted to exude all the creative juices they wanted; just don't spend any money while exuding, they were told.
They had a budget around a million dollars. Given the immensity of the project, it wasn't much money at all. Buehrig and friends proved to be good stewards of the budget they were given, however. The car, from the ground up, displayed numerous examples of innovation.
Just look at certain aspects of modern automobiles: unibody construction with subframe, front drive, aerodynamic styling, hidden headlights, flush- mounted tail-lights and fuel fill and others, the Cord 810/812 had them all. Built on a 125-inch wheelbase, the Cord 810/812 featured a welded unit body teamed with a "stub" frame, as Motor magazine called it. The nomenclature was correct, as the frame rails extended forward from the firewall. The front suspension was independent and used a transverse leaf spring attached to longitudinal arms.
Buehrig and his associates knew the mechanical shortcomings of the L-29 well enough to avoid making the same mistakes twice. One of those shortcomings was the "block-long " straight-8 engine. It just wouldn't do. Lycoming developed an engine that would: a 288 cubic inch V-8 engine with aluminum heads and pistons that packed a 125-hp punch in a much smaller package.
The Cord was offered in the '36 model year in four body styles: the Westchester sedan, the Beverly sedan, the Cabriolet or convertible coupe, and the Phaeton or convertible sedan. Auburn augmented the Cord in '37 with a supercharger that added 45 more horse-power to the engine. Those large exhaust tubes bespoke speed. The horns are aftermarket Buell air horns, contemporary to the times. The Cord had innovations aplenty–to wit: flush-mounted tail lamps and fuel fill, and an illuminated license carrier on the trunk lid.
The Cords were displayed at the 1935 New York auto show, but under false pretenses. Cars were supposed to be complete and road worthy. One requirement of the show was that 100 examples had to have been built before it was to go on display. Working under incredibly tight deadlines, the Connersville crew assembled the cars, sans transmissions. Wood dummy transmisisions were put in place to fill the void. Only 11 were actually assembled at the time it went on display. E.L. Cord had some clout and called in a few favors to get his namesakes displayed without the company having to produce the mandatory number of cars.
False pretenses notwithstanding, the Cord was a hit! The flurry of activity around the futuristic looking car begat orders. From there, the list of begats could have rivaled the gospel of Matthew: Orders begat sales. Sales begat cash. Cash begat paid bills, etc.,etc...
But, as we said, these were incomplete cars. Had they been bona fide drivers from the production line, they could have been sold. And the production line could have started turning out cars in a timely fashion. However, a long delay of six months took the bloom off for those who ordered cars, and they canceled. The dream of a cash flow for a sinking company became a wisp of vapor.
Even after the cars rolled out of the Connersville, Ind. plant, their rush through the development and manufacturing processes proved to be a bugaboo. The transmission was particularly troublesome, not only in its manufacture, but also its tricky mode of operation. It proved to be too temperamental and required frequent maintenance. It was not a quality for encouraging sales. Sales of the Cord 810 reached a mere 1,174. For 1937, in an effort to boost sales to beyond that meager number, Cord offered a custom series and a supercharged engine. The custom series was built on a wheelbase of 132 inches. Body dimensions were stretched to make it more roomy and give a more affluent appearance. A special panel was available, at extra cost, in the Custom Berline model that included such amenities as radio speaker, vanity, cigarette telephone for communication with the chauffeur.
If you wanted your affluence to go fast, a super-charged engine, rated at 170 horsepower, was optional for another $415. Auburn was an old hand at supercharging engines, notably the Duesenberg SJ and the Auburn 851 supercharged.
The supercharger, of the Schwitzer-Cummins manufacture, was cam driven and spun at six times the engine speed. Compression was decreased slightly, from 6.5:1 to 6.3:1. The supercharged engine used a slightly larger carburetor with a 1.25-inch barrel rather than a one-inch.
This option was a natural for the Cord, as it was marketed as a fast, sleek personal car built for speed. In fact, more Cord 812s were built with the supercharger than without. Production figures obtained from the Auburn-Cord-Dusesenberg Museum indicate that 688 were built with the supercharger and 461 were built without it.
Despite addition of the supercharger and the longer wheelbase models to the mix, the Cord was not sold in sufficient numbers to put the company back on the road to profitability. The company's demise came on August 7, 1937.