Museum's showpieces

Legacy of priceless Cord and Duesenberg brands on display at their original Indiana home

Aug 11, 2007

Special to the Star

The auto maker, named after the Indiana town where it was located, was producing just six cars a day, with 500 unsold ones still sitting on the lot. Its saviour was Errett Lobban Cord, a former sales executive for Chicago car maker Moon.

The new executive repainted the dumpy, unsold cars, sold them through an aggressive campaign, and then focused on stylish new models. In five years, annual sales jumped from 2,500 to more than 20,000 cars.

“E.L.,” as he was known, also added the Cord, the nation’s first volume production front-wheel-drive car, and the Indianapolis-based Duesenberg, considered by many historians to be the finest American car ever produced.

Cord was headquartered in a stunning art deco building that stood in front of the factory in Auburn.

Besides executive offices, there was an ornate showroom for dealers (the public bought cars at a downtown dealership).

When the company closed for good in 1937, the building was sold and it went through a number of owners.

In 1974, it reopened as the Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg Museum, meticulously restored to the way it looked for its debut in 1930.

Dealers entered through the front door, where their first view was of the grand staircase that led to the second floor.

Today, visitors come in through the side door, into an auditorium where a 12-minute film outlines the company’s history.

Cord built his topline cars in low numbers and charged big dollars.

In 1929, when a Ford averaged $500, a Duesenberg chassis was $8,500 and then you had to pay a coach builder to put a body on it.

And the wealthy gladly paid it for a car that, in supercharged configuration, could reach a factoryclaim of 200 km/h.

Today, examples of the company’s cars trade in the seven-figure range, not counting the museum’s priceless versions: a long-wheelbase Cord prototype; a Duesenberg Y, used for styling but never put into production; and a 1904 Auburn that’s the earliest known to exist.

Indiana was a major centre for automobile production, and the museum displays many of the other early players, including Marmon — the only car besides Cadillac to offer 16 cylinders — Imp, Kiblinger, Zimmerman, Crosley, Cole, Stutz and Studebaker.

That last make has its own museum 160 km away in its hometown of South Bend.

Also in the collection are several Indiana-built McIntyre vehicles, which formed the basis of the wildly successful Tudhope, produced in Orillia, Ont., from 1908 to 1913.

Upstairs, E.L.’s office has been reproduced, with his desk and several of his personal belongings, while the design studio contains replicas of clay models, and two original 1934 Auburn and 1936 Cord “body drafts.”

These full-size drawings were measured and used to produce the body parts.

They were sketched on painted aluminum panels, which were usually repainted and used again. It’s amazing that these still exist.

Various factors caused the company’s demise, including changing consumer tastes and a redesigned Cord delayed by production problems.

Cord himself wasn’t too upset; he built another fortune in real estate and mining, owned a radio station, and became a senator in Nevada.

He died in 1974 at the age of 79.

After the museum, be sure to visit the city’s downtown, built around a town square that contains several historical buildings, numerous shops and restaurants, and traffic lights that still spell out “Walk” and “Don’t Walk.”

Until Sept. 15, the town hosts Sculptures on the Square, a series of 20 life-size bronze statues scattered about, including a pair of sightseers outside the museum.

The Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg Museum is located at 1600 South Wayne St.

It’s open daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.; adult admission is $8.

For more information, visit www.acdmuseum.org or call 260-925-1444.