Automotive American – Classic Vintage & Modern
Category: E.L. Cord
This is the fascinating story of a car that began life as a Cord 812 and then ended up atop a Chrysler chassis
The car was orginally spotted in the Boston area back in the early 50’s
Make yourself a coffee and read the article here
This is an excellent interview with Gordon Buehrig from back in 1989 carried out as part of the Automotive Oral History Project.
Some of the cars designed by Gordon Buehrig were the Stutz Black Hawk, Auburn 851 Boattail Speedster, Duesenberg J, Duesenberg J, 1956 Lincoln Continental Mark II, and, perhaps the car he’s most known for, the Cord 810/812. He also invented the removable T-top, patented in 1951
I’ve actually visited the excellent ACD Museum in Auburn Indiana and there is a display of Buehrig artefacts.
The Buehrig interview is here
We visited the wonderful ACD museum a few years ago and I’m very pleased to see that the restoration effort is still going on, read Daniel’s article here
My favourite classic cars of all time are the Cord 810/812’s
This was increased after we visited the Auburn Cord Duesenberg museum in Auburn Indiana a few years ago.
An excellent book was written by the late Josh B. Malks called Cord Complete It was his second book on the subject, his first: Cord 810/812 – The Timeless Classic has become a classic itself. Details of the book can be found here on the excellent “Old Motor” online magazine. The ACD museum site is on this link.
It’s a wonderful place with an amazing Art Deco Showroom and a lot of the original artefacts from the days of Gordon Buehrig and E.L.Cord
The Art Deco Showroom
A picture from the stairs showing an excellent view of the car and the original showroom floor.
Original Clay Model From The Thirties!
Displays of other vehicles that used to be built in the area, such as Studebaker
As part of our road trip we visited the fantastic Auburn Cord Dusenberg Museum in Auburn IL
http://www.acdmuseum.org/
The museum has a fantastic display of all three marques (and other cars), and is sited at the old factory and showroom. The showroom is particularly interesting, it has been restored to it’s former art deco glory. The entrance fee is very low and the whole thing is maintained by enthusiasts.
The original offices of E.L.Cord and the design offices have been restored.
There is an excellent Gordon Buehrighttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Buehrig exhibit and also his clay models and drawings are on display along with those of the various designers of the three marques.
An excellent museum, well worth a visit!
Whilst we were there we watched the Ben Stiller film “Tropic Thunder” which was really funny.
Strange thing was there were only four people in the cinema including us, during the show the weather was so bad there was a power cut. The reason it was so quiet was that the cinema had only been open for a few days. We stayed at an any excellent Hampton Inn (also brand new) and ate at a Buffalo Wild Wings (very frendly, good food, again brand new) All three were next to each other on a new development just outsise Auburn.
