Auburn Speedsters: In the Shadow of Cord and Duesenberg

Salesman and ex-racer Errett Loban Cord took over the ailing Auburn Automobile Company it its namesake town in Indiana in 1924.  He soon hired Alan Leamy as chief stylist, and emphasizing styling and value for dollar (something WIlliam Lyons was soon to do in England with Jaguar) brought Auburn sales roaring back from a trickle.  In 1926 he formed a combine with the Duesenberg brothers, Fred and August, in the hope that the expensive, race-proven Duesenberg products would add an aura to the Auburn lineup.  In 1928, the year Auburn introduced Alan Leamy's boat-tailed Speedster design below, Duesenberg released its legendary Model J at the top of the line.

For awhile it seemed the new combine could do no wrong.  Sales boomed, and in 1929 Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg released the front-wheel drive Cord L-29.  The stock market crashed in late October of that year.  For awhile, A-C-D powered through the crisis on a mixture of slick style for the money (Auburn), a unique drive system (Cord) and impressive engineering at exclusive prices (Duesenberg).  By 1931 A-C-D was the 13th largest auto maker in America...

...but the party was soon over.  Cord's Auburn strategy had been to offer a lot of style and solid build quality for the money, but engines were fairly prosaic flathead inline sixes and eights, with rigid axles front and rear.  Auburn held onto mechanical brakes longer than wisdom dictated; Duesenberg had pioneered 4-wheel hydraulic brakes on their 1920 Model A.  So Auburn introduced a V12 in 1932; at $975 the Standard coupe was the lowest-priced V12 ever.  The boat-tailed Custom Twelve Speedster offered a dual-ratio Columbia rear axle to go with the 391 cubic inch engine built by Lycoming, a part of Cord's industrial empire.  At $1,275, the Speedster seems a spectacular bargain today, but 1933, the year the V12 Speedster was introduced, was the worst year of the Great Depression.  A total of 14 range-topping 12-165 Speedsters were produced, and under two thousand V12s in total. Production of the Twelve ended after 1934...

A-C-D was down but not yet out, and Cord moved designer Gordon Buehrig over to Auburn from Duesenberg, where he had designed many bodies for the Model J, as well as a front-wheel drive "baby Duesenberg" that would become the classic Cord 810 in 1936. The cost of the Cord front-drive V8 tooling meant the firm had little funding for a new Auburn tooling. So Buehrig grafted a cleverly restyled grille and fenders onto the Leamy-designed 1934 body shells, and Duesenberg engineers added 2 cylinders to the Lycoming flathead six for a 280 cubic inch inline eight, then supercharged it.  It made only 10 less horses than the V12, at 150. Hydraulic brakes were now standard on all Auburns, and the supercharged eights received an aluminum cylinder head as well as the dual-ratio rear axles, which effectively offered 6 speeds. The maroon car below is a phaeton; there were also 2-door convertibles, coupes and sedans, as well as a 6-cylinder version.  

                             

But the car that captured the imagination of car enthusiasts was Buehrig's design for the Supercharged Speedster.  Buehrig dressed up leftover boat-tail speedster body shells with pontoon fenders cut away in front to harmonize with the V-shaped grille and curving bumpers. Chromed exhaust pipes exit below big "Supercharged" insignia flanking the hood, and a Streamline Moderne flying lady hood ornament provides a finishing touch.

At the rear, contours of the boat tail and fenders are smoothed into a more streamlined form than on previous Speedsters. The dash with its twin chromed modules would find an echo in postwar sports cars; round instruments face the driver, while the passenger gets a clock. 

A plate attached to the dash certified the car had exceeded 100 mph before delivery, and was signed by A-C-D test driver and speed record holder Ab Jenkins, another sign of Cord's talent for showmanship.  It all came to a stop after 1936, the final year of Auburn production, while Cords and Duesenbergs continued through 1937.  Tooling costs for the new Cord 810 and 812, dwindling sales in a Depression economy, and the inefficiency of making 3 different makes of car with few shared parts, all contributed to the collapse.

Counting cars built in 1935 (the 851) and 1936 (the 852, identical save for the number on the grille), an estimated 500 of these final, supercharged straight-eight Auburn Speedsters were built. Except they weren't quite final...

Auburn enthusiast and car collector Glenn Pray bought the rights to the name and a trove of leftover parts in 1960, and in 1966 began building fiberglass-bodied Auburn Speedster replicas on Ford Galaxie chassis.  These also used Ford-sourced V8 engines, and Pray's Model 866 Speedsters got something the Auburn originals never had: independent front suspension.

138 of these Speedster replicas were built over a decade and a half, and got enough attention that several other firms got into the act, though their efforts lacked the authentic trim pieces of Pray's 866. With several firms cranking out replicas of Gordon Buehrig's original Speedster design from the Sixties well into the 21st century, one might well ask whether there can be more than a thousand left of Gordon Buehrig's 500 boat-tail Auburns...

*Footnote:  Other products of the Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg combine, as well as other Indiana car makers, are reviewed in "Looking Back: When Indy Was Indy", posted on Sept. 1, 2015.

Photo Credits:
Top & 2nd: wallpaperup.com

3rd & 4th:  Ruby Smith
5th:  classic.com
6th:  the author

7th thru 10th:  Mecum Auctions

11th & bottom:  Jason Potter

Digital prints edited by Veronika Sprinkel:  veronikasprinkel.com