[Music] it's a kind of a car that turned to grown man into a kid it's just to me the most fabulous car that's ever been built well late a truly timeless was its styling he'd be a little difficult parallel park but once it's rolling it's a great driving car for me it's been one of the really important things in my life here in Auburn Indiana you had emerging from medium sized factory you had three great stellar automobiles Auburn Cord and Duesenberg aiming at the elite motors of the age and there was a price range for everyone there was the Auburn which was sporty looking and handsome and styling just a little bit more expensive than the average car you had the cord which was highly exotic front wheel drive the first front drive car in America quite a bit more costly than that and then you've had oozing berg which was in a class by itself and it was the most expensive the best engineered and best produced automobile in the US and they all came from the same corporation run by one amazing man El Corte who from 1926 to 1937 had an auto empire that was independent and apart from all the big companies in Detroit the Amin automobile company was an outgrowth of an existing wagon and coach and buggy maker here in Auburn the attacker carriage company the a car brother started experimenting with cars and they build Auburn cars for the first time to settle the public in 1903 and they sold 50 in their first year after showing them at the Chicago Auto Show well unfortunately a recession hit the u.s. in the 1921-22 winter season and the company never recovered from that recession and they really needed help from someone outside and so they recruited Al cord to come here and the first step he took was to sell 700 stockpiled cars that were on the back fields and he merely pulled those out and had them repainted in bright colorful combinations of paint schemes that had never been used on our roads before he had enough surplus parts to build 1,500 more cars and he did exactly the same thing with those well mr. cord had a dream of building America's best motor car and so he looked at Duesenberg which was a company in Indianapolis Indiana that was already building high-end custom body passenger cars he had enough capital built up in Auburn automobile company through exchanging stock and with no outright cash he was able to acquire Duesenberg a very healthy going concern and he told them to do so my brothers Fred in August but he wanted them to drop the car they were making all together and not offer a passenger car product for a couple of years and spend all their time on the development of the great model J it sold for over $15,000 it had huge horsepower the car is a model J Duesenberg supercharged at the time this car was built there wasn't such an automobile existing in this country it's better flamboyancy to it that it's not offensive and it's and it's a big massive car well the the radiator itself when it's out of the car is just under 4 feet tall you're looking at a headlight with a 12 inch diameter lens in it it's got four feet of timing chain in the engine and that would sink most cars that could make it real nice anchor they put their money where you could see it and it went into the paintwork in the body panels and metal finishing and chrome plating it went everywhere on the car [Music] the car has a sensation to me of just whole cars wrapping me up in the car and it's protecting me and it becomes straight as an arrow and 110 115 miles now that car is just as straight as an arrow and it's just got a real eerie feeling and as a scream going down the highway and the engine goes dead silent and all the noises in back of you and it's just it's a wonderful feeling it really is many of the people who are going to buy one of these would say well if it'll outperform such-and-such then I'll buy it it was a car also that sold very much by word of mouth among rich people and movie stars you know Gary Cooper would buy a Duesenberg and then buy a second one and that would cause Clark Gable to buy a Duesberg and also buy a second one and they would even buy the same model there was a lot of copycat activity going on well now as a kid had an opportunity of working in a local garage to put a head gasket on Clark Gable's convertible cool I said I've got to have one of these things sometimes and when you drive one of these cars at speed for about six hours II engine temperatures in the exhaust temperatures supersaturated if you were to touch the frame in the car you'd burn your hands you walk past the car in the back end you can hear the gasoline oil in the gas tank [Music] there's one thing that's bad about the car and it really is concerning I've never been able to solve it it's a kind of a car that turns a grown man into a kid by the late twenties mr. Kord probably through his ego as much as anything else had a goal of naming a car after himself as most auto executives did and he wanted to introduce America's first production line car that would have front-wheel drive this was an all new idea and believe it or not in the late 20s there was not ever a front-wheel drive car on the market and so he commissioned the Cordell 29 Marilyn and I had been looking for the right classic car to restore and I'd seen an ad in Hemmings Motor News that advertised in the l-29 Court Marilyn and I looked the car over and we got off to the side and I said to what do you think did you think is this is the one and she smiled and she says if you're ever gonna restore a classic she says that's the one so we negotiated for about a day and we bought it and the rest of the story took 12 years and four months to do the restoration well I was putting in about 20 hours a week and if you figure that out that's 10,000 hours over ten years I have no regrets for spending that much time on it that was a labor of love and there was often times when I'd spend many many hours just to perfect one little thing just the way I wanted it I think it's a crime to destroy history and do anything but that so he kept great records laid down to my new details even so far as what was their typical spacing on tax in the upholstery I mean I would make a note of that that they were three inches apart and I did it the same way the door handles the interior Hardware have embossing that's very DT like expensive silverware the refined detail and you don't think anybody can point out anything that's wrong and quality fit finish or authenticity and if there is something wrong I want to know about it because I want to change it I like the long hood the fact that it's front-wheel drive meant that there is no drive shaft tunnel therefore it was several inches lower than any other car and it's time period it gave it a long low fleeky look I love the Brougham body style it's kind of mysterious look he wonder who's in the backseat because if he looked at the car from the side you cannot see the passengers to me it's a very elegant car il called in marketing the car that bears his name wanted to create elegance and good taste and one of the methods he used to do this was on the front of the simple but tasteful brochures to put a completely bogus coat of arms which distinguished his cars from those that had a mere logo or badge [Music] the courtroom is a bedroom or show room if you will for the car the garage pretty much had to be where it is to fit on our lot here on top of the hill and we wanted the courtroom to be directly behind it so that we could drive through the garage and into the courtroom so really the rest of the house developed around the courtroom we've secured that they rule with airtight weather stripping to keep it out of what we call our dust free room and it makes the preservation of the car much better it's environmentally controlled by the heating and cooling of the house so it's maintaining a constant 68 or 70 degrees in here year-round in a dust free environment it's nice in the evening if you you don't want to bother with paperwork or watching television or just enjoying walking in the moonlight to just open the doors and walk into the courtroom which is right off of our living room by 1929 it was the boom times in this country was the best economy America ever known and mr. cord has spent the previous five years building up his auto company in his auto empire to where he had enough companies to form a conglomerate core Corporation and his financial fortunes were very flush and he had quite a reputation on Wall Street as being this Boy Wonder in the auto industry and he had set the world on fire with the styling and the looks of his cars but also he got more involved in racing and speed testing in the performance of his cars to prove how fast they were and that's really what he concentrated on quite a lot in the 1930s of the fact monster of power and strength and his first lap at 145 miles an hour two and a half miles a minute one of these and it's only warming up today is a car or a combat plane this is a 1935 Duesenberg SJ speedster was built for AB Jenkins for worlds distance records on the Bonneville Salt Flats and it's known as the Mormon meteor AB Jenkins was a native of Utah and he started out as a racer and he raced in different types of races but he was primarily a long-distance racer he promoted the Salt Flats as a race course and the state of Utah and he raced with pierce-arrow in 1933 and 34 and then he switched to Duesenberg in the Duesenberg was the most powerful American motor car and the S J Duesenberg had 320 horsepower so this was a good car to start with this car was especially modified by August Duesenberg one of the Duesenberg brothers and the engine through various modifications was brought up to 400 horsepower at 5,000 and the car actually turned between four 4,000 4,500 rpms for the entire 24 hour run the primary focus of the trip was to break the distance records for 24 hours and this car did that the 1935 he averaged 135 miles an hour 24 hours and 153 miles an hour for one hour the caller's actually timed top speed 168 miles an hour that's not an official record but that's what I've been we've been told before by the members of the family this was quite a feat when you consider the most powerful car in America or the Duesenberg probably had about a hundred and seventy-five horsepower and most of them had 50 or 60 horsepower and the speeds on the highway were around 45 miles an hour that's about as fast as you could drive on our roads so to take a car and be able to go that fast and not have substantial tire problems or suspension problems or engine problems is really quite extraordinary given the period of time that they were establishing these records [Music] [Music] the Duesenberg was an over engineered car and where it was primary designed as a luxury car it was capable of being modified and pushed far beyond the limits of a normal operating environment car drives greatest earrings very light the brakes alight it would be a little difficult to parallel park but once it's rolling it's a great driving car and it's just quite a thrill to look over this long hood and the great sounding engine and it has a period where it resonates and it really is a joy to drive just the styling of the car is so dramatic and the outside exhaust and it's just to me the most fabulous car that's ever been built I'm just very thankful that I can own it for a little while and I hope that I'll be able to leave it to my children and they'll be able to enjoy it as much as I have by 1935 the depression economic climate was catching up with mr. Kord and so the company needed a new spark to make it come alive and even though they didn't have any research and development monies at all mr. Kord said we've got to revive the court in a whole new look a whole new generation it's got to be the emblematic at art deco-style car of the mid 30s and it's got to be totally different looking ultra-modern different looking than anything else in the market different than what we've built before so he commissioned his workers to come up with the great 810 chord which came out in four 1936 [Music] so 1936 cord model 810 Westchester sedan it was made by the Auburn oil mill company in 1936 in 1937 and they made about 3,000 of them in those two model years planning began in 1934 and in less than a year they had actually completed the mechanical design and the styling both of which differed widely from the norm at that time Oberon needed about a million dollars to bring the court to production they didn't have a million dollars because they had lost nearly four million the previous year so they went to the parent corporation the court corporation to ask for a loan in order to reduce the car and would turn down in January of 1935 and so they made what was really a rather rare corporate decision the president of the Auburn erbil company gave the go-ahead to construct five prototypes in the hopes that something would come up they'll admit them to build a car as a matter of fact something did and their central manufacturing company which was their sheet metal stamping division was able to consummate a huge sale of kitchen cabinets to Montgomery Ward and as a result that money became available but now they needed to get their permission of the parent corporation which had previously turned down the project they couldn't very well show them a finished car because that would essentially have said that they had countermanded a decision unilaterally and so the day before the corporate meeting on July 8th 1935 the designer of this car Gordon burek took some photographs of a quarter scale model that had been constructed of the car those photographs went to Chicago on the night train was shown to the board the next morning and result in the approval of the project three weeks later the first prototype left on a shakedown cruise to Los Angeles now while the people that are green could seemingly perform miracles even they could not have gotten approval to build a brand-new car on July 8th and send it off down the road on July 29 the court is front-wheel-drive and that meant a number of things they meant a completely new drive unit engineered from scratch it had a four-speed transmission most American cars had three speeds at that time the transmission was shifted by an unusual Bendix mechanism that involved solenoids and switches and vacuum and a whole bunch of things which makes one deliverer shifts at all but it really does it had a v8 engine which was still relatively unusual in 36 the engine had aluminum cylinder heads aluminum manifold so although mechanically the cord was was a very interesting automobile boy made a truly timeless was it styling [Music] the cord was the first production car with concealed headlamps that has headlights that disappear into the fenders and can be raised at night when they're needed they are operated by a mechanical crank arrangement one for each side it's the chords body style that makes it unique and what most people remember about it in every list I've ever seen of the ten most beautiful cars ever built or the 100 most beautiful industrial objects ever designed the cord is always near the top of the list first quart I have assault is when I was 12 years old and actually the Cooper friends I was playing hooky from school on a beautiful late spring day and we wandered past a used car lot in the Bronx where I lived at that time and there was this absolutely fascinating car sitting right out in front and the attendant in a chair tilted back against the post and I asked him what it was and he said it was a cord and I said is that a German car to my eternal shame and he said no it's American and what I did was I began from that time to collect everything I could find it was written on the cord and on my 18th birthday I bought my first car it was the first of five that I was done in marketing the cord 810 a radical an innovative car which broke new ground in almost every way they produced brochures which were very conservative which didn't include uh neither the engineering all flamboyant exaggerated photographs because the car was expected to sell itself Oberon produced cords knowing six colors the only one of them that was well we would today call mentality is this one it's called cadet gray and it was followed in parentheses in the ads by the word luminescence and the way they accomplished that was to grind up fish scales and had mix it in with the paint my name for the car and many people name their favorite automobile is moon shadow because it looks particularly beautiful in the Twilight just as the moon is coming up it picks up the the orange and red rays of California sunsets and is truly something to behold I think that everyone needs one or more passions in their lives I have been blessed with a lovely wife who is one of those passions and another one is my hobby and my hobby is the cord I Drive it I write about it most of all I enjoy it and sometimes I just stand and look at it and while that may not be easily understandable to someone who doesn't had that kind of passion for me it's been one of the really important things in my life by the middle of 1937 by summertime mr. cord realized his figures had going into the red too long and too often he had a lot of financial and legal advisers surrounding him and they all advised unanimously to get out of the auto industry now and so the auto companies went into the solution but the moment they did people started recognizing these cars as something special the minute they were orphaned obsolete cars people started collecting I like to think of a story that Gordon Buick told me many years ago he said back in the 20s and 30s automobiles were like snowflakes they were very elegant they were very dainty they had fine detail they weren't very aerodynamic they just kind of floated down but they were beautiful and he said in modern day cars we've melted the snowflake and it's become a teardrop I don't know of anyone who could have accomplished what mr. Kord did in such a short time and put out cars under duress under the worst economic climate the country has ever known I really don't know of a walter Chrysler or a Henry Ford or William Durant or an re olds who could have done just what mr. Kord did especially at his young age [Music] [Music]
