In the comment thread of a recent story about the Cord 810/812, we debated why this iconic car was not successful in the marketplace (go here). To add to that discussion, below is a quote from the Cord’s designer, Gordon Buehrig. Although this is just one man’s opinion, it is a first-hand recollection from a key participant:
“. . . (I)n the middle of Summer they decided to go ahead with the Cord [810] program, and they had to have a hundred cars built by the time of the auto shows which they built by hand. And, they built one prototype car, and George Kublin drove it to California and back. Mr. Cord was living in Beverly Hills, California, so they drove this car out and showed it to him and drove it back, and Kublin turned in his report, which said that they had a problem with cooling, and they also had a transmission problem — the car would pop out of gear under low torque. But, they had no chance to change anything and still make the deadline, so they built these cars and showed them in the auto show.
They didn’t have transmissions in them because the transmission hadn’t been redesigned yet. We showed a convertible model. The top mechanism had not been worked out, but the car had a disappearing top, so we just told the press that the top was in there, but it was a disappearing top, and the car was a sensation at the auto show, and they got lots of orders, but we were far away from being able to produce the car and to produce a good car, and so when the first cars came out, they still had problems with the transmission, and they had problems with cooling.
It was an expensive automobile, and the competition never helped us any. They would tell their customers that Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg was going to go out of business, and you didn’t want to spend that money and buy an orphan automobile. You wouldn’t be able to get service on it and so forth. So, it was rough going, but they did continue building cars in ’36 and ’37. They corrected some of their errors, and by the time they finished building the cars in ’37, they were pretty good automobiles. They still had a few bugs in them, but they were pretty good cars. The thing that really, in my opinion, killed the company was that six-months time when nothing happened on the Cord program. Had they not done that, we would have had a good car, I think, and the whole outcome would have been different.”
— Gordon Buehrig (Crippen, 1984)
RE:SOURCES
- Crippen, David R.; 1984. “The Reminiscences of Gordon Buehrig.” Automobile in American Life and Society. Interviewed in July.
Also see ‘Lincoln Zephyr was a first step in Ford surpassing Chrysler’
Is is indeed unfortunate that they didn’t fully develop the car before revealing and launching it. The design would have carried them to the war where they could have secured contracts. I would only take issue with one element of Mr. Buehrig’s assessment: he failed to mention that the coffin nose design likely contributed to the cooling issues. A more traditional, taller grill that allowed more air flow would have looked fine. So would free-standing lights. It was the car’s incredible lowness and overall proportions that made the design compelling.
My restoration shop discovered that Cord didn’t work out problems with body shell assembly for the 810/812 sedans. After Cord stopped production, the body dies and rights to use them was sold to Graham-Paige, and they built bodies for both Graham and Hupp. After stripping off all the original paint from a Hupp Skylark back to bare metal, my guys were amazed at how many individual body panels had to be welded together, and then huge seams had to be leaded-in and filed smooth. Years later I spoke with someone who had a Graham Hollywood and he said the body assembly problem was a huge factor in why the Cord, then the Graham companies lost money on each car built.
The 810’s roof was comprised of seven stampings, presumably because Cord could not afford a press large enough to stamp a single stamping and/or could not generate sales sufficient to amortize the press’s cost. According to Wiki the company expected to reach a production of 1000 units per month. In retrospect, there wasn’t a market for 12,000 Cords per year at its listed price. Therefore, either the company’s assumptions about market size or its estimated cost to build, and thus price to earn a profit, were fundamentally incorrect. Thus it appears that the car had more flaws than just technical.
E. L. Cord was a dreamer and a visionary. He saw the potential of Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg, but failed to provide the capital investment to bring and keep the production facilities competitive and cost effective. I have read in several places about how the Connersville, IN Auburn plant had the multiple-piece sheet-metal parts just to make one solid roof panel, so those problems carried over into the Cord. By 1937, E. L. Cord’s new shiny object of affection was the airplane.
Excellent comments … as a restorer of a 810 Westchester, as well as Josh Malks partner in creating Cord Complete, The History of The Cord 810-812 Models of 1936-37. I became intimate in learning all the shortcomings and design breakthroughs Gordon tried to overcome. With no $ money to invest in tooling he had to come up w/ off the shelf take up parts and limited professional engineering to back up his concept. The biggest was due to management decisions in final approvals that took many months to approve.
First, the financial situation. C/A/D had three engines, three chassis, and two drivetrains to deal with. IIRC the Deusenberg J did not sell as well as hoped, and was looking old. Broadly, Cord and Auburn were in the same category, expensive toys. Auburn’s best year was 33k. Cord was hoping for 12k/yr. Cord was already financially weak and in fact went bankrupt in 37. The Roosevelt Recession was right around the corner, and would have finished it off anyway.
Errett Lobban Cord (1894-1974) was a true entrepreneur: A dreamer with expensive tastes and limitless ideas. Kim in Lanark is correct: The Cords, the Auburns and the Deusenbergs were cars of movie and Broadway stars, even though by 1935, all were mechanically out-of-date (except the Deusenberg twin-cam engine). E. L. Cord did not fully fund his automotive or other transportation companies’ development or production needs. The Cord Corporation was basically a holding company for over 150 transportation-related firms including Lycoming, New York Shipbuilding, Stinson Aircraft, Checker Motors and American Airways (later Airlines)! I don’t know how much inter-company sharing took place within the holding company. Other than a Gram Parsons song in the 1970s, I could not find a biography of E. L. Cord. I do not know if the “Auburn / Cord / Deusenberg Museum in Auburn, IN or Cord’s Reno, NV foundation (1962) has an “official” biography. By the way, the A / C / D Museum is a car-lover’s dream. Prepare to spend a full afternoon !
Thanks Jed for that information about Cord as a holding company. That explains why American Airways flew Stinsons back then. Of this conglomerate were Auburn, Cord, or Duesenberg separate one Make corporations?
All of the luxury brands under the Cord Corporation eventually were managed out of the factory store / corporate offices in Auburn, IN (Today’s A / C / D Museum). Lycoming made the Cord and Auburn engines, I believe. I am not certain where the final Deusenberg engines were built, although the Deusenberg “factory” survives as the Indianapolis “IndyGo” bus garage on the southwest corner of Harding Street and West Washington Street. (Across the street on South Harding is the former Marmon-Herrington 4X4 plant.) It is my understanding that the Cord and Auburn fabrication operations were done in Connersville, IN. Behind the A / C / D Museum is the National Auto and Truck Museum, which is independent. natmus.org I believe that final assemblies took place in this former plant.
Thanks for this further information. My thoughts were more finhancial- Could money be easily be moved between sister corporations?