(EXPANDED FROM 12/1/2019)
The 1936-37 Cord 810/812 is arguably one of the most important American cars of the 20th Century. In addition to offering iconic styling, it was also remarkably advanced in its engineering.
Among the car’s features included front-wheel drive, unit-body construction with a step-down floor, independent front suspension, and a V8 engine with a semi-automatic transmission.
The problem with all of that fancy technology is that the car’s automaker, the Auburn Automobile Company, was too small and financially fragile to debug the car before it was introduced in November 1935. That led to even more reliability issues than with the 810/812’s predecessor, the ill-fated L-29.
Around 3,000 coffin-nosed Cords were built before production was halted at the end of 1937. That was a good 2,000 units lower than the L-29, which was produced from 1929-32 (auto editors of Consumer Guide, 2006).
Front-wheel drive and a unit body allow sleeker styling
The 810/812 most stands out stylistically because of its hidden headlights and coffin-nosed grille. However, the car is also noteworthy for its unusually low greenhouse for late-1930s American sedans. The 812 Westchester sedan shown here is 60 inches tall, almost six inches lower than a 1936 Cadillac Series 60 touring sedan.
Perhaps the most obvious way that the Cord design team led by Gordon M. Buehrig was able to give the car such a sleek appearance was by using front-wheel drive. This dispensed with the transmission tunnel and driveshaft, which in rear-wheel-drive cars intruded into the passenger compartment. The 810/812 was also the first American car to offer unit-body construction with a step-down floor, according to the Dayton Auto & Memorabilia Museum (2022).
Also see ‘Lincoln Zephyr was a first step in Ford surpassing Chrysler’
The Cord was unusually low for its time, but it was only .4 inches shorter than a 1948 Hudson four-door sedan. This suggests that 810/812 could have achieved roughly the same sleekness by sticking with a more conventional drivetrain that drove the rear wheels.
The Cord that could have been an Auburn
Pulling from the parts bin of the automaker’s lower-priced Auburn brand could have avoided the debilitating reliability issues that quickly soured car buyers to the 810/812.
Indeed, Martin Buckley (2020) noted that the 810 was “conceived as a ‘baby’ Duesenberg and was almost launched as an Auburn.” The high-priced Duesenberg was the third brand fielded by Auburn Automobile Company.
It might have made sense to have dubbed the 810 an Auburn. This was the company’s highest-volume brand but was struggling so badly that it would be discontinued at the end of 1936 (auto editors of Consumer Guide, 2006).
The 810, which was only produced in 1936, was priced in the $2,000-to-$2,200 range. This straddled Cadillac’s entry-level Series 60 and its next step up, the Series 70.
Meanwhile, Auburn’s price range stretched from around $750 to almost $1,800 (aside from the iconic, boat-tailed Speedster, which listed for $2,245). For 1937 the Cord 810 was supplanted by the 812, which had an expanded model range that went from around $2,450 to almost $3,600.
Decontented Cord fails to save Hupp and Graham
After the Auburn Automobile Company left the car business, the tooling for the Westchester sedan was shared by two dying automakers, Hupp and Graham. Their models were 10 inches shorter than the 810/812 from the cowl forward and used a six-cylinder engine driving the rear wheels. Prices hovered around $1,000 to $1,250.
In theory, that showed how the 810 could have been offered as a lower-priced Auburn. However, production of the Hupp and Graham was hampered by tooling that wasn’t designed for higher volume (Conceptcarz, 2022).
So perhaps the 810/812 was doomed. That’s too bad, because the car’s gorgeous styling deserved greater success even if it didn’t come with all of the Cord’s engineering advancements.
NOTES:
This story was originally posted as a “Gallery” feature on Dec. 1, 2019 and was expanded into a “History” feature on Dec. 20, 2022. Prices, specifications and production data are from the auto editors of Consumer Guide (2006) and Automobile Catalog (2022).
Share your reactions to this post with a comment below or a note to the editor.
RE:SOURCES
- Auto editors of Consumer Guide; 2006. Encyclopedia of American Cars. Publications International, Lincolnwood, IL.
- Automobile Catalog; 2022. Accessed Dec. 20.
- Buckley, Martin; 2020. “Cord 810: ahead of its time.” Classic & Sports Cars. Posted Nov. 11.
- Conceptcarz; 2022. “1940 Graham Hollywood.” Accessed Dec. 20.
- Dayton Auto & Memorabilia Museum; 2022. “Industry firsts found in the Cord 810/812.” Accessed Dec. 20.
- Wikipedia; 2022. “Cord 810/812.” Page last modified Sept. 19.
ADVERTISING & BROCHURES:
- wildaboutcarsonline.com (Automotive History Preservation Society): Cord (1937)
- oldcarbrochures.org: Graham (1940)
Was the company in a position to use a more conventional rear-driven 810/812 as the basis for both a smaller Auburn Six and larger Cord V8?
If so would it have been enough to save it and what ramifications would it have had for the company were it to survive beyond WW2 (especially with the impact on Hupp and Graham-Page)?
I haven’t come across much information about how easy it was for Hupp and Graham to give the 810 body rear-wheel drive. I would have thought that a unit-body structure would not lend itself to an easy conversion, yet they somehow made it work on a shoestring budget.
It’s hard to see how Auburn could have survived while under the leadership of E.L. Cord, who played fast and loose with securities laws and didn’t appear to understand automotive economies of scale. Cord strikes me as more of an artiste than someone who knew how to build a financially sustainable automaker. The Cord 810/812 is a good example of this — it looked great on paper but was a disaster to produce.
One could argue that Graham did survive beyond WW2 but was transformed into the Frazer half of Kaiser-Frazer (in retrospect, Frazer might have been better off going it alone). Hupp may have been too far gone to save, and I doubt that drawing upon the body of a luxury car would have done the trick.
Too bad E.L> Cord was the limiting factor in allowing the company to be financially sustainable to survive past WW2 as another independent.
Given the clashes between Kaiser and Frazer, can see the case for the latter to go as it alone (could the same be said for Kaiser even if he would have needed an experienced hand in place of Frazer?). Would Frazer though have been better off succeeding in his supposed attempt at acquiring Willys-Overland?
Obviously the choice of front drive for the 810-812 Cord was a follow-on for the marque from the straight-eight version, giving it a distinctive character. The advantage was that it gave the car sensational handling. which I know from having driven mine on a race track. It was phenomenal! How many owners appreciated this I know not. Also its performance was exceptional for the time.
As for trying too hard, the 810’s creators looked everywhere for proven parts that they could adapt to the design. The Bendix system for shifting for example was already being offered by other auto makers.
When General Motors assessed one they were impressed by its capabilities…but they rated it as unlikely to succeed in the market. And it didn’t, selling price being a big issue.
Karl, that’s cool that you were able to drive a Cord. How was its steering and braking for a front-wheel-drive car?
As such a small automaker, I would imagine that Cord would have had to use as many off-the-shelf parts as possible. Even so, the histories I have access to usually point to reliability issues with the transaxle and V8 engine. The auto editors of Consumer Guide went as far as to argue that “the 810/812 had even more problems than the L-29. This reflected the fast-fading fortunes of the Cord Corporation that dictated a shoestring budget, cost-cutting engineering in places, and too much hand labor for consistent or even good build quality.”
The Cord’s price range was a notch above Cadillac’s entry-level models but well below the prices of senior Lincolns and Packards . . . none of which were selling particularly well due to the Great Depression. In contrast, the Auburn eights were more in LaSalle and Zephyr territory. That might have been the more promising market positioning if they could have brought down the 810’s manufacturing costs.
I not only drove an 812 sedan but also drove it all over England during some years of ownership. The steering was excellent but the braking was probably no better than any American car of its period. They failed completely down one famous hill!
The handling was the remarkable asset. It cornered virtually flat and steady, not much understeer, very impressive!
I’m not sure I trust “The auto editors of Consumers Guide”…We had some problems but they could all be fixed. I don’t recall the engine having a reputation for problems. I had mine overhauled but that was just a question of wear.
I do think that pricing was a problem — trying to match such an unorthodox car with a conservative buyer body at that level.
Karl, I would imagine that owning a Cord is an amazing experience. If I were to buy a pre-war American car it would be an 812.
I would agree that the automotive editors of Consumer Guide aren’t always the definitive word on a given historical detail. However, some of the more in-depth Cord histories on the web also tend to discuss reliability issues. Here are four examples:
Bill McGuire of Mac’s Motor City Garage (2015) stated that the car did not survive “long enough to correct the many but solvable mechanical defects,” which included a “woefully underdeveloped” transaxle. “The vacuum-electric setup was moody and balky, but Auburn simply lacked the time and resources to develop a proper mechanical shift linkage for the front-mounted transmission.”
Martin Buckley of Classic & Sports Car (2020) noted that the four-speed Borg-Warner transmission “was lovely when it worked; but delight too often turned to frustration and the gearbox was probably the Cord’s commercial downfall.” The writer added that there were also “issues with wheel bearings and engine cooling.”
Graham Kozak of Autoweek (2020) wrote that with “budgets tight and the clock running down, 810 production started before all of the design and engineering kinks were worked out. Running changes and improvements were made on the fly.” The result: “build quality was uneven and reliability suffered. Owners of new cars were unhappy with the leaks, creaks and vapor lock issues, which were even harder to accept given the relatively high $2,000-$3,000 price tag the Cords commanded — though not unlike those who purchased early Tesla offerings, many were reportedly enthusiastic true believers who simply wanted their cutting-edge cars repaired, not replaced.”
George Mattar of Hemmings (2018) stated that Cord collectors could experience a number of problems. These include a transmission that has “a failure-prone thrust washer that, when it failed, would jam the gears” and an engine that could overheat “because the radiator was positioned over the transmission, which normally ran quite warm.”
So are all of these folks wrong? I don’t know — I have neither owned a Cord nor specialized in its history. However, reliability issues have been mentioned often enough that it seems worth some consideration.
Hey, I didn’t say that the cars had no problems. However some of the writers you quote were simply rehashing second-hand info.
Vapor locking was not unknown as I found at some crucial times when my car was not yet shaken down. The Bendix-Hudson Electro-Vacuum shifter, also known as the Hudson Electric Hand, was an available technology that worked well when properly adjusted, allowing preselected shifting. As for the transaxle, it was good enough to cope with the many early Tuckers that used it. Granted, Tucker did make a longer version that gave more torque capacity.
I can concur that owning and running a Cord 812 was a great experience — especially in the UK! I finally got it driving and running very well, which was my cue to sell it. It’s now in the royal collection of Kuwait. I hope they drive it now and then!