Food, Home and Style

Redux: You Drive Me Crazy

Lynn Parramore looks back on the Great Depression to see the path ahead.

“God made the American restive. The American in turn and in due time got into the automobile and found it good.” –James Agee

The fascination with cars is as American as apple pie. Ever since Henry Ford’s Model T rolled off the assembly line and cars became accessible to the masses, we were hooked. By the mid-1920s, many working-class families could afford a car. By 1930, almost one in three Americans was the proud owner of an automobile.

Amid the ravages of the Recession, we’ve been hearing a lot about Chrysler, General Motors, and Ford. As the Big Three teeter on the edge of destruction, some folks are feeling waves of nostalgia, fondly remember having a Chevvy in the garage or their first time behind the wheel of a sleek Mustang.

Thinking of these cars gives us a twinge of regret.

But what about the Duesenberg, the Auburn, and the Cord? These were three of the most revered cars ever built in the U.S., but they were killed by the Great Depression. Today, all that’s left of their glory is the Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg Museum in Indiana, which is housed in the Auburn Automobile Company’s old national headquarters building,

During the 1920s, E. L. Cord, a former race-car driver, built an automobile enterprise that by 1931 was the 13th largest seller of autos in the U.S. Known as the “Titan of Transportation,” he founded the Cord Corporation and established a holding company that produced the Cord Automobile along with the Auburn and the Duesenberg. Over the course of his astonishing career, Cord also acquired Stinson Aircraft, Checker Cab and American Airways, which later became American Airlines.

Cord’s cars were the glories of the American road, including such stylish rides as the ’35 Auburn 851 Supercharged Speedster. His Duesenbergs won the Indianapolis 500 in 1924, 1925, and 1927: a Duesenberg was the first Indy 500 winner to average more than 100 miles per hour.

Alas, Cord’s magic automative touch was no match for the Great Depression, and in the mid-30s, the company began to stall. Undaunted, Cord put the pedal to the metal and assigned his ace designer Gordon Buehrig to create a beautiful automobile on the cheap. The result was Buehrig’s masterpiece, the “coffin-nose” Cord 810 and 812 of 1936, a gorgeous streamlined beauty that still looks modern today.

The car was a smash hit, and orders came fast and furious. But the company had trouble meeting demand, because there wasn’t time to work out the bugs out which always plague new car design. Eventually, the wheels came off Cord’s empire. In August, 1937, after building some of the most stunning and beautifully-designed automobiles in the world, the Cord and Cord Automobile were forced to file for bankruptcy.

During the current economic crisis, the brutal forces of the marketplace are bearing down once again on the American industry. Dire economic circumstances, self-inflicted wounds, and new consumer preferences have merged into a perfect storm the Big Three may not survive.

Will the best products of their heyday end up in museums where we can admire what once was? Maybe not, if bailouts succeed. But it seems unfair somehow that GM may survive when Cord’s empire went by the wayside. The rules of the road don’t always seem quite fair.

Tags: Big Three, Cars