Cord 810

Cord 810/812 at a glance

E. L. Cord and the road to the 810

Errett Lobban Cord took control of the Auburn Automobile Company in 1924–1925 and built a holding company around it that included Duesenberg, the engine maker Lycoming and the aircraft maker Stinson. In 1929 he put his own name on the Cord L-29, one of the first mass-produced front-wheel-drive cars, with a Lycoming straight-eight. About 4,400 L-29s were sold before production stopped in 1932. German Wikipedia adds that its three-speed gearbox was first shifted through a linkage and later electro-pneumatically, and that a 1930 attempt to sell factory bodies under the invented coachbuilder name LaGrande failed. The Cord Corporation also owned Checker Motors; after the group was sold to the Aviation Corporation amid fraud allegations, E. L. Cord moved to Nevada and made a new fortune in property.

The 810 was the second Cord. Its predecessors in front-wheel drive were the L-29 and the Citroën Traction Avant of 1934; English Wikipedia notes that the 810/812 sold less well than both. The car was shown at the New York Auto Show in November 1935. Cord rushed to build the 100 cars needed to qualify for the show, but the transmission was not ready, and first deliveries had to wait until February 1936; cars reached New York City in April 1936.

Design: coffin nose and hidden headlights

Gordon Buehrig, who had also styled the Auburn 851 Speedster, gave the 810 a low body without running boards. The nose had a horizontally louvred grille wrapping around the front instead of an upright radiator, which earned the car its "coffin nose" nickname. American Heritage called the 810 sedan "The Single Most Beautiful American Car" in 1996.

The details were as new as the shape:

• headlights hidden in the wings, modified Stinson landing lights raised by hand cranks on the dashboard;
• hidden door hinges, a rear-hinged bonnet and pontoon wings;
• a concealed, lockable fuel filler door;
• variable-speed windscreen wipers and a standard radio;
• an engine-turned dashboard with full instruments and a rev counter.

Front-wheel drive and the Lycoming V8

The 4,739 cc Lycoming V8 produced 93 kW (125 hp), the same as the L-29's straight-eight. German Wikipedia points out that the V8 was short compared with an inline engine, which suited the layout. The gearbox sat in front of the engine, as in the Traction Avant, so the car needed no driveshaft and no transmission tunnel. It had three speeds plus an overdrive and was shifted semi-automatically; English Wikipedia names this unit as the main source of the car's troubles.

The front wheels were independently suspended on trailing arms with leaf springs and friction dampers; at the rear a tube axle ran on semi-elliptic springs. Ground clearance was 229 mm. With 1,860 kg and 93 kW, the standard car had about 50 kW per tonne, and the supercharged version about 68 kW per tonne. Our power-to-weight calculator compares that with later cars.

810, 812 and the supercharged cars

The supercharger was a mechanically driven Schwitzer-Cummins unit, and supercharged cars are easy to spot by the chromed external exhaust pipes on each side of the bonnet. Unsold 1936 810s were renumbered and sold as 1937 812s. Supercharging added 34 kW, about 37% more power, and the two 1937 Custom models gained 178 mm of wheelbase. The total of 2,972 cars in English Wikipedia includes 205 convertible cabriolets and a one-off 1938 Custom Cabriolet prototype.

Why the Cord failed

Cord planned 1,000 cars a month, a rate that was never reached. Early cars jumped out of gear and suffered from vapour lock, the dealer network shrank quickly, and only 1,174 810s were sold in the first model year. German Wikipedia adds that E. L. Cord's withdrawal from the car business hurt sales further. Production ended in 1937, together with the Auburn brand; Cord sold his holdings in August 1937. By German Wikipedia's figures the Cord brand built 7,823 cars over 1929–1937; its 2,830 cars for 1936–1937 do not match the 2,320 it quotes for the 810/812, another sign of how uncertain the totals are.

Legacy: from Hupmobile to the Toronado

The body dies did not go to waste. In 1940 Hupmobile and Graham-Paige used them for the Hupmobile Skylark and the Graham Hollywood, with conventional front engines, rear-wheel drive and plain headlight pods. About 1,900 were built before production ended in the autumn of 1940.

The 810/812 remained the last American front-wheel-drive car until the 1966 Oldsmobile Toronado and the 1967 Cadillac Eldorado, both of which used hidden headlights in homage; the second-generation Toronado's bonnet even echoed the coffin nose. Those General Motors cars are part of our history of General Motors. Its layout, with the gearbox ahead of the engine, was never used again on an American front-wheel-drive car. Replicas followed in the 1960s: SAMCO built the Cord 8/10 from 1964 to 1966, and two companies in Tulsa, Oklahoma, tried versions with Corvair, Ford and Chrysler powertrains until 1970. German Wikipedia also mentions replicas by Glenn Pray's Cord Automobile Company built with original material on Chevrolet chassis.

The car had a screen career too. A white 1937 812SC Sportsman appeared in the 1938 film Gangster's Boy, and in the 1965 film Where the Spies Are, based on James Leasor's Jason Love novels, a Cord is promised to a character; Leasor himself owned an 810 and an 812.

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