(first posted 1/2/2013) New Year’s Day has come and gone; the holidays are officially over. As I write this, it is snowy and about twenty degrees outside, so what better way to distract ourselves from the post-Christmas blahs than admiring a classic Auburn Boattail Speedster I captured on a beautiful warm fall evening back in October? Even though the Auburn became a victim of the Depression, its timeless beauty transcends the challenging mood of the time; then and now. The sun always shines on an Auburn Boattail Speedster.
Indiana has a rich automotive history. Studebaker Corporation and International Harvester may have been longer-lived, but the Auburn Automobile Company, later home to the storied Cord and Duesenberg marques, is perhaps the most famous, and had the most consistently beautiful cars. Certainly, the most remarkable Auburn was the lovely boattail Speedster.
The sporty Speedster first came on the scene in 1928, and was a pleasant break from the more staid Auburn sedans of just a few years prior. Not only did its light body result in 100+ mph, it was beautiful to boot, with its lovely lines. It was all thanks to E.L. Cord, who found himself in charge of a near-bankrupt car company.
Thanks to his eye for style, he turned lemons into lemonade when he ordered 700 unsold black Auburn sedans repainted in bright, eye-catching colors. Once those sold, Cord kept the momentum going with cars like the Speedster. Style sold, and Cord knew it.
The Speedster was a real showroom draw, and would remain a vital (albeit low-production) part of Auburn’s lineup. That meant a complete re-do for the 1935 model year. The Speedster was given much more voluptuous lines, courtesy of Gordon Buehrig, who would later on style the equally snazzy Cord 810/812 (CC here). Interestingly, the car was not totally new, and in fact used the 1934 Speedster body. Thanks to Buehrig’s swoopy restyle with the streamlined nose and pontoon fenders, it was not readily apparent.
The 1935 851 Speedster was powered by a flathead, side-valve straight eight, with 150 horsepower. Also included was a Schweitzer-Cummins centrifugal supercharger, the critical component in the car’s ability to achieve “the ton.” Indeed, every Speedster was certified as being tested to 100 mph or more before delivery. A plaque on the instrument panel attested to its proven capability. Years later, it was revealed that not every car had been tested; it was more like 20% of them. Still, there was no doubt that the Speedster could reach the speeds it boasted of.
image: hotwheels.wikia.com
Auburn Speedsters have been blue chip collector cars for a long time, but are naturally not frequently seen, due to their scarcity. I, however, knew about them from an early age, as one of my earliest toys included a yellow over brown Hot Wheels Auburn Speedster. Later on, I got a white one just like the one shown above. I still have both, though the yellow one is, ahem, a bit chewed and missing parts. What can I say, as a two year old I enjoyed chewing on my toy cars’ wheels. The plastic fenders of the Auburn were apparently also quite tasty.
So it was a treat to see this original ’35 at one of the South Park Mall car cruises. This car has been a car show fixture for years, though it doesn’t appear very often; it had probably been five years since the last time I’d seen it. Many a company has offered an Auburn Speedster kit car over the years, but seeing a real one makes those kits look like the facsimiles they are. Just like a fake Rolex, it is pretty easy to tell a phony from the original. The biggest giveaways are the more delicate-looking wire wheels and the interior.
And what an interior! This car has been fitted with ’50s vintage turn signals, as seen here mounted to the left of the steering column. I particularly like the red-over-cream color scheme, and the diamond-pattern dashboard inserts are beautiful. This was not a cheap car in 1935 ($2245), and it shows in the little things. Even the gauges are special. In the depths of the Depression, a sighting of one of these beauties must have seemed a hallucination, like seeing a Ferrari 458 Italia in Ottumwa, Iowa would be today.
And here’s the heart of the matter: that lovely 280 CID straight eight. I’ve always loved the flexible exhaust pipes snaking out of the hood and disappearing into the running boards. And check out those horns!
Sadly, Auburn was not much longer for this world. ACD was losing money despite its attractive line of cars, and the little-changed 1936 852 Auburns would be the last. Starting in 1937, the Cord 812, along with a handful of ultra-pricy Duesenbergs, were all that would remain. But Auburn cars live on in the hearts of classic car nuts to this day, and the Speedster, with its long list of speed records and sheer beauty, will undoubtedly never be forgotten.
These are truly awesome cars. I’ve twice been to the Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg Museum in Auburn, Indiana, and am itching to go back. These cars are the epitome of style, elegance, and sophistication.
Hmm, during the months I was working in Missouri we must have driven by that Museum a dozen times. Unfortunately it was often early in the morning or late at night.
I must get back there and see it. Lovely car, look at the size of those fenders!!
Auburns were amazing cars for their day. Probably the closest approximation in today’s market would be the BMW, in terms of desirability and status. This kept the company going rather well (compared to the competition) during the beginning of the Depression, with the early 30’s cars not taking nearly the sales hit, and I believe the company was eking out a slight profit. Or, at least keeping the losses within reason. Then the restyling on the 1934 cars bombed badly. I’ve only ever seen pictures of one 1934, and it sure wasn’t ugly, but I guess it was just awful mundane compared to it other years. The company was skating on thin enough ice that the ’34 failure basically set the complete collapse in motion.
What most people don’t realize is the the classic-ness of the A-C-D line was preserved by the final collapse in 1937. The clays for the 1938 and 1939 Cords were a tragic watering down of the coffin nose grille and would have seriously damaged the esteem in which those cars are held. Sort of the automotive equivalent of the rocker dying young before he’s had a chance to put out the inevitable bad album, or the album of American Standards.
And the A-C-D cars were the core of the antique automobile hobby. I can remember pictures in car magazines from the late 40’s and 50’s where the outing of the local antique car club was shown, and what was on the field is Model T’s, Model A’s, A-C-D cars, and some older Packard’s. Period. Those were the cars that it was felt were worth preserving during the WWII and immediate postwar period, when you had to be awfully weird to want to preserve an old car.
I’ve always felt an attachment to Auburns. My father owned a 1930 or ’31 sedan when he courted my mother, and that was the car they eloped in on March 11, 1933, Dad’s 25th birthday. Both parents remembered the Auburn fondly, and Dad often boasted of the Lycoming straight eights power. Pictures I have of the car show a big, burly sedan with presence, just the thing for whisking a beautiful young lady off into the gathering dawn.
I am impressed. I can no longer read the small print in some of these pictures but I assume ArBee can and I am impressed that the engine was a lycoming. I always thought of them as aviation only and when used for ground speed record attempts I only knew of air cooled engines which were finicky when you went slow.
As someone who has suffered from the IH bug I guess your state produced some pretty good vehicles.
Yes, Errett Lobban Cord purchased Lycoming in the late Twenties. He used their straight eight engines in Auburns and the magnificent Cord L-29. I believe that Lycoming also produced engines for the Duesenberg J, built to Fred and Augie’s specifications.
And the flathead V-8 in the Cord 810 and 812 was also a Lycoming engine, although at that time they weren’t pushing the brand as a stand-alone anymore. I believe at the time of Mr. Cord’s purchase of Lycoming, they were suppliers to a number of ‘assembled’ (in the parlance of the time) car manufacturers, but slowly Auburn and Cord became their only customers.
Splendid car; very nice write-up. These were the dream cars of their generation; no wonder they were reproduced for that age group in later years.
Those are beautiful cars. I remember seeing one in the late 1940’s when I was a little kid, and being very impressed…it totally outshone any cars I’d seen until then, even the nice 1936 Ford phaeton one of my dad’s employees had.
My bride and I like old movies. There’s a late-’30s tome called “Topper” (somebody turned it into a TV series in the early ’50s) we recently watched. In the movie, there’s an attention-grabbing sports car that looks a lot like this that plays a pretty major role. Its gaudy boat-tail was its most noticeable characteristic. I’m not familiar with that era of automotive aesthetics, so, for all I know, every other car had a boat-tail. Still, I’m wondering if the featured car was an Auburn.
There was some correspondence regarding the “Topper” car on the Autocar.co.uk website last year, and the verdict was that it was specially built by a custom shop, rather than being an Auburn.
I’ve only seen 2 Auburn speedsters in my life. One was an original 1935 in green, at the Pittsburgh Gran Prix in about 1992, and a replica in a two tone reddish orange and white sometime earlier. Both cars were magnificent, but the replica was no comparison. It reeked cheap compared to the original What I find remarkable is how small the interior was in both models. For such a huge automobile, I’d probably find the legroom unsuitable for my 6’3″ frame.
In the fancy shows one sees such vehicles, most of the rich owners huddle among themselves, and only perfunctatorily talk to the Hoi Polloi. I’d venture to say the original buyers of ACD’s and Packards felt the same way. However, during the Great Depression, even the wealthy wished to remain anonymous and didn’t wish to flaunt in front of the starving masses. That probably helped to sink the super luxury makers of the 30’s.
The owner of the featured car is a democratic sort to drive it to a mall car cruise. I give him the thumbs up.
I also have a red Hot Wheels edition.
People needed escapism in the thirties, and they loved movie stars. The amazing cars the stars drove thrilled the masses. Unfortunately, there were not enough stars to make up for the people who feared a luxury car would be reason for a beat’n.
gorgeous! the A-C-D cars were some of the most beautiful cars of the late 20s/early 30s. It’s a shame that the depression also happened around this time and destroyed the market for cars like these. But at least they went out gloriously, with cars like this and the Cord 810.
Thanks for covering this car. It is also one of my all-time favorites from the 30s. BTW, $2245 adjusted for inflation would be $37,726-solidly in BMW territory
From considerable experience, it is not realistic to apply an inflation adjuster this far back and have it be meaningful from today’s perspective. Wages were proportionally (inflation adjusted) so much lower then. The only way to get a meaningful comparison is to calculate how many week’s average salary a certain car would have cost back then.
The average salary in 1935 was $1500. So the Auburn would have cost about 18 months worth. Median household income today is roughly $50k, so you’d have to compare it to a $75k car.
But there are so many other differences from then and now: financing, etc… Let’s just say that the Auburn was much more affordable than many top-rank luxury cars, and was a pretty decent deal, but in the depths of the Depression, there was a reason it didn’t sell well at all. For the great majority of folks, the Auburn was still just a dream car.
State, local, and federal tax bites were much lower for the 99% back then. But federal rates for high incomes went from 25% in ’29 to 50% in ’31, ~70% in ’34, finally in ’38 to 91%, where they stayed for over 2 decades. That’s why Al Capone cheated and Duesenberg failed.
I’ve never seen a real Speedster, but I looked at two or three replicas in a car museum north of Chicago a year or two back. The ones with obviously phoney outside exhausts are easy to spot, but one looked remarkably authentic – until I noticed the flap over the fuel filler.
I was stationed in Keokuk, Iowa while on CG duty, working them buoys from 95 to 98 and I must say that I had no idea that so many car fanatics were out and about, especially up there in the Quad Cities. Once again, a very nice write up by Tom.
I guess this here was the genesis of many Bill Mitchell classic GM designs. I see the Corvette Stingray and Riviera boat tail on this beautiful Auburn. The exposed exhaust pipes coming out of the hood echo the Mako Shark I. In it’s time the Auburn must have been The Car of The Stars in hollywood.
There is an Auburn Speedster here in Kenosha (as well as a Cord L-29). It showed up for a show in September. I really need to eke out some spare time and get some of these pictures posted to the Cohort. This particular Auburn will take your breath away, and it wasn’t even in the show; the owner just drove it to the show to look at other cars.
Talk about a car crazy town. There are some cars tucked in garages here in Kenosha you wouldn’t believe, and not just the expected AMCs. And not just American iron either.
I must be really lucky – so many years as a kid going to the ACD festival over labor day in Auburn – about 20 miles north of Fort Wayne. I saw so many Auburn 851/852 speedsters that they would make me yawn. They were nice, but I was drawn to the Duesenbergs. Only later did I develop an appreciation for how beautiful this design was. Whether it was the Speedster or one of the other body styles, the 1935-36 Auburn was one of the most beautiful cars built.
Thanks for this one, Tom. A great way to start the new year.
JungGeordie – That’s pretty interesting… It never really crossed my mind before, but I would have guessed the typical Auburn as being something like an $80-$100k car in today’s dollars. I know calculating inflation isn’t an exact science either – and that without modern financing arrangements that $37k was much further out of reach – but even if that’s the most conservative CPI estimate I’m still surprised. That actually makes me appreciate them a little more somehow; for both their impressive ability to outpace inflation and for being within the reach of a much broader demographic, when new, than I had always assumed.
Not that I was lacking reasons to appreciate them (and Duesies, and Cords) by any stretch of the imagination. Who could possibly dislike an Auburn Speedster? I’m inclined to answer in the affirmative to the question Tom asks in this article’s title. One of the all-time truly great rolling works of American art. Imagine a modern counterpart being built in Indiana today? I don’t even think that would be possible. They were a vehicle singularly unique to their time. Lots of schnazzy 30’s cars were visually and conceptually at odds with the stark reality of the Depression, but the A-C-D vehicles I’ve always felt took it one huge step further – pushing into an uncharted plane of existence between the known and the outer limits of imagination. Stepping into one must have been like momentarily exiting your bleak earthly surroundings and entering a portal into a world where the Jazz Age still raged onwards to glorious heights and technology and style had leaped forward several lightyears while you were sleeping somehow. Check out that “tennis harem” ad – I guess for a lucky few, this actually was what the 1930’s were like.
…and along those same lines, how great were all the Auburn ads and literature from back then? The very colorful one fourth from the top is part of a series in that same style. I found all of them online once but can’t seem to dig it up now. They’re all great, though.
This has been the background on my computer for a very long time now, wish I still had my Hot Wheels Speedster (matching Tom’s pictured above) to sit on top of the monitor alongside it!!
Sorry, I guess bitmaps don’t work as attachments – let’s try PNG:
Sean, see my reply to JungGordie’s comment. Realistically, the Auburn was more like a $100k car, in terms of the much lower wages back then. Don’t forget wages have grown much faster than inflation over the decades, especially in the fifties and sixties. We’re much more affluent than back then, even factoring inflation.
Paul, you’re absolutely right. The Auburn Speedster was out of reach to 99% of Americans back in 1935, even without the Great Depression. I don’t think we’re more affluent now, but leases and other creative accounting have allowed people to buy cars regardless of their economic status.
If I can think back to the 1970’s, a top line Cadillac or Lincoln could be had for around $ 10K. A lesser Cadillac for $ 7K. In those days, reaching a 10K salary was hitting a milestone. To buy a car no trade meant thousands off the sticker price. Today, all most people have to come up with is a $ 249 lease payment and 2 or 3K in trade or cash to drive out a brand new 28K car.
With today’s creativity, Auburn would have sold cars in the Dust Bowl. The Joads might have travelled to California in style in their “leased” Speedster, at only $ 25 per month.
As much of a car freak as I am, I’m slightly less fanatical about pre-war automobiles…I love them, but not quite as enthusiastically as later eras. Perhaps this is due to my age (40)?
Having said that, I must admit that I love the Auburn Boattails. Like the author and other commentor, I had those same two Hot Wheels as a kid and was aware of these cars from an early age…Funny how some automobiles transcend their era and fuel the imaginations of later generations.
To me, there is a pretty clear mental delineation when it comes to Automobiles…Most of what is discussed on this website (and many others) are “cars”…Not a derogatory remark by any means, as I love ’em all. Even the odd-balls and orphans so often discussed on this site.
Whenever I see one of these, or a Chord, Deusenberg, Pre-war Packard or Rolls-Royce, I almost automatically think “Motorcar”…Something of perhaps a higher order of machine.
Am I alone in this?
Both varieties of Auburn Speeddster are roaming local streets real and fake. A good find Tom but I see these cars on a regular basis here in Napier. Anyone with a art deco era car brings it to Napier to photograph it amongst the period buildings.
Beautiful. Love that landspeed spread.
Well it’s good to know that these could do a 100 mph, how good were the brakes? And the handling? Just curious…
Beautiful car. And very appealing marketing. Paint and interior are gorgeous.
Can’t believe almost all posts on one of the most elegant Auburns, are from over a decade ago.
Thanks for bringing this wonderful essay to the fore. Indeed, these are dream cars. How about this ad for the 1934 Auburn. The more that you read it, the more you find within its verbiage to tell us of how to be snooty and just who could afford it. Look at Mom’s dress. I love how Dad is so satisfied with his choice thanks to the ladies in the family. And to think that he was head of his swim team at his Ivy League school in 1915. Oh, how splendid! Ans by buying this Auburn, he is pooh-poohing the idea of driving an untested contraption – the 1934 Chrysler Airflow.
Nice .
Kinda big for my taste but yes, it’s very beautiful .
-Nate