1929 Auburn Cabin Speedster
On my recent trip to Meadville, PA, about two hours north of Pittsburgh, for one of my nephew’s college graduations, I stopped off along the way to pay a visit to the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Museum in Auburn, Indiana, just north of Ft. Wayne. One of the cars that I found on display there totally knocked me out. For one thing, its a totally outrageous design, and secondly, it was never a production model, only one ever having been built. And it was destroyed.
Cabin Speedster’s Ash Frame
The car is formally known as an Auburn Cabin Speedster, and was built in 1928 for display at new car shows. It featured a 115 hp Lycoming straight eight and an Auburn 8-90 chassis. The body, possibly styled by factory Auburn designer Alan H. Leamy, was built by Griswold of Detroit. It was aluminum over ash framing. The descriptive placards state that this was typical practice for the day. That is, unless you built Dodges or Citroens (or others) with bodies by Budd, which were all steel. But tooling up a one-off body from pressed steel elements would have been prohibitively expensive. By the end of the 1930s, wood was long gone from production car construction. OK, except for the loonies at Morgan and Marcos in the UK and station wagons in the US.
The car was exhibited at the New York Auto Show in late 1928, and then at the Los Angeles Auto Show in early 1929, where it, and many other display cars were destroyed in a fire.
Great Headlights
The car on display at the ACD Museum is a replica produced in 1984 for Dr. Peter C. Kesling of Laporte, Indiana. In fact, Dr. Kesling had two replicas built, the one at the ACD Museum and one that I can’t account for.
1930s Barclay Slush Cast Auburn Cabin Speedster
But aha! The Cabin Speedster actually did enter production. It was produced by the Barclay Manufacturing Company in Hoboken, New Jersey in the 1930s for sale through five and dimes such as Woolworth.
A pair of Barclay Auburns
A slush cast toy car of this size probably would have sold for five cents, but the two-tone paint job may have bumped it up to ten.
I feel fortunate to own two examples. The greenie exhibits very little “play wear”, but the silver over red Speedster exhibits a considerable amount of, shall we say, patina?
Replica Grille Emblem
The ACD Museum is about 30 miles south of I-80. Not only is the museum historically important, but Auburn old town, which is most of the town, consists of well maintained/restored commercial buildings and private residences. Well worth the effort to visit, as are many Indiana towns such as Columbus, home of Cummins Diesel. And South Bend with the Studebaker museum and a small school called Notre Dame. Nice tee shirts.
While you’re visiting A-C-D, stop next door at the National Auto & Truck Museum (natmus.org). Not only will you see a coffin-nose Cord in Indiana State Police livery, they have an incredible toy museum. One of NATMUS’ projects was the restoration of a GM Futurliner. It may be coming to an auto show near you, but in the meantime you can relive the resto process here: http://www.futurliner.org
As for the second Speedster, it may still be part The Kesling Automobile Collection is now on display at the La Porte County Historical Society Museum*, LaPorte, IN.
*a/k/a Door Prairie Auto Museum
P.S. Unless you’re “Stude-frugal”, when in South Bend make an effort to dine at Tippicanoe Place, the former home of Studebaker co-founder Clement Studebaker. The house is quite grand, and the cuisine ain’t bad, either.
The headlights are Woodlites. They look streamlined but they probably do not put out much light through their vertical slits. Hemmings has an internet article about them “Dim, Yet Brilliant Too”.
http://www.hemmings.com/hmn/stories/2008/10/01/hmn_feature20.html
Thanks for supplying the name for these headlights. I knew that they were “Wood…” something or other but could only come up with Argentinian chandelier makers when I googled the term. I remember, as a kid, being awed by the Ruxtons and Cords that had these lights.
You’re welcome. Thanks for your interesting articles.
As a Fort Wayne native, I am quite familiar with the ACD Museum. The restored art deco factory showroom is stunning. If you can handle crowds, labor day weekend is the time to go, as this is annual national meet for the ACD Club. There is a parade of classics, followed by all of the cars parking around the town square where folks can walk around and look at them all. Everyone absolutely MUST listen to the muffled grumble of a Dusenberg’s Lycoming straight 8 at some time during one’s life.
A couple of years ago, I ran a piece about my first visit to the ACD parade in 1972 here.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/cc-outtakes/cc-nostalgia-curbside-classics-1972-edition/
Columbus (Indiana) is also home to some innovative mid-20th-Century architecture, unusually so for a town of its size, thanks largely to Cummins and one of its former CEOs. I.M. Pei, Cesar Pelli and Eero Saarinen are represented, among others. Well worth at least a day trip.
I’ve come across this car somewhere before, but had forgotten just how unique and compelling it is. Thanks for this nice change of scenery from our GM-heavy diet here lately.