Auto Legend: Home of 'Apogee of Style' Becomes a National Historic Landmark

They have been described as “rolling sculpture.” The high-end, high-style automobiles that came out of Indiana’s Auburn Cord Duesenberg factories are world renowned for their classic, innovative design. At a time when Detroit’s titans were amassing market share and power, the small boutique car manufacturer played the role of iconoclast, following its own vision.

The Auburn Cord Dusenberg faciltiy in Auburn, one of the few intact remnants of the independent American auto manufacturers of the first part of the 20th century, recently became a national historic landmark. Although no cars have been built there since 1937 and the factories are gone, the showroom, administration building, parts department, and Cord L-29 Building–named after one of the company’s most notable offerings–are largely untouched. They were built with a flair that seemed to surround everything connected with the automaker. The sleek Art Deco styling, suggesting unimpeded forward motion, dominates. The showroom is ornate and imposing; the parts department features a barrel vaulted roof. Automobile legend aside, the architecture itself gives powerful witness to an era.

Since 1974, the showroom and administration building has been occupied by the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Museum. It is the only car museum whose exhibit space is a showroom from the period it commemorates. The NHL nomination calls it “12,000 square feet of Art Deco splendor.” In 1994, the National Automotive and Truck Museum moved into the parts department and the Cord L-29 building.

In the 1920s and '30s, Auburns, Cords, and Dusenebergs represented car manufacturing’s apogee of style and engineering. Although each line was different, the cars were instantly recognizable. A prototype driven cross-country for a road test–with all brand identification intentionally omitted–attracted widespread attention nonetheless. “They trail us up side streets, country wayside filling stations, and literally stampede the car,” recalled one of the drivers. Everyone wanted a look at “this sleek low creation.” At a 1935 auto show, people stood on the running boards of other cars to see over the heads of the crowd gathered around the latest Cord. The company produced many firsts: the first front-wheel-drive passenger car, the first one-piece hood opening from the front, the first model without an exposed vertical radiator shell, and the first open-and-close headlights. Detroit kept an eye on Auburn, where experimental car bodies were shielded by frosted glass windows to discourage corporate espionage. Still, most of the innovations found their way into the mass market.

The facility Began as the Auburn Automobile Company in 1903, an outgrowth of the local carriage and wagon trade, an old tradition that by 1890 was one of the state’s top five industries. In the 19th century, a flood of German immigrants, many of them skilled woodworkers, found employment in the business. They populated the first auto assembly lines, since the new mode of transport was nothingmore than an internal combustion engine on a wagon frame.

This is precisely what Charles Eckhart and his three sons were doing as the new century dawned. The Eckharts, who ran a wagon building business in Auburn, were tinkering with a self-propelled carriage. The idea was hardly new. At that early date there was an automobile trade magazine called The Horseless Age, and its reporters watched the Eckharts and related their progress. The operation managed to build 25 automobiles in 1903. The next year, the Eckarts erected a pair of big two-story structures behind the wagon business, and this was the beginning of the company.

Eckhart senior died in 1915 and the family sold the business shortly afterward. The new owner, a Chicago investment banking firm, spent a great deal on capital improvements in anticipation of big sales. But the plan ran into trouble with tough economic conditions after WW I. With the help of marketing guru Roy Faulkner, Auburn turned its fortunes around. One of his ideas was to cater to a segment of society steadily gaining more power and independence: women. Promotional literature depicted them driving down the road in the latest Auburn models. Faulkner had other good ideas as well, and the company thrived into the mid-’20s, when the service and parts building was built.

Visionary industrialist E.L. Cord first laid eyes on the place in 1924, when he bought an interest. The company now covered over 18 acres. Cord figured that it wouldn’t take much to increase output to 100 cars a day. He moved a backlog of cars by sprucing them up with nickel plating and two-tone paint. The profits helped launch his plan.

Cord’s marketing was straightforward. He asked customers and dealers what they liked and what they didn’t. He invited mechanics to look his cars over and prospective drivers to take a ride. Cord figured that a good product would sell itself. Auburns were highend specialty vehicles, but Cord pitched them with a regular-guy delivery. Ad copy read, “These cars are built by a home-owning group of workmen in Auburn, Indiana . . . ”

Between 1910 and 1920, the auto industry resembled the dot com boom. The frenzy to get in on the action produced two groups of automakers. Henry Ford and others went for mass production and economy of scale. Their inventory was limited but dependable, but the profit on each sale was relatively small. To make this approach work, they relied on standardization, mechanization, speed, and control over their workers.

The other group, independent manufacturers like Auburn, bought parts from suppliers, stored them in big warehouses on site, and had teams of seasoned machinists build the cars by hand. The price was high but so was the quality.

Cutting edge factories at Ford, Buick, and Oldsmobile manufactured their own parts and filled the ranks of management with college educated engineers and managers. On the assembly floors of the independents, senior craftsmen ran things and the system tended to be more collegial than hierarchical. This allowed for more experimentation, evidenced by a wider range of models.

Detroit’s chief rival was Cleveland, with Indianapolis a close second. In part because of its history of carriage manufacturing and in part because of its well-developed rail system, Indiana was a hub of the industry. Independent companies thrived there, producing famous makes such as Stutz and Marmon.

Within two years, E.L. Cord completely took over the company. The 34-year-old CEO began expanding his empire. Output doubled. A new line emerged–the Cord–and the company acquired the Duesenberg Motors Corporation, which had gone bankrupt. Of the Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg trio, the Duesenberg became the deluxe item, the absolute best the company had to offer. Along with the Cord, it was at the forefront of the auto aesthetic, experimenting continually with new curves and lines, taking on dramatic new looks and astonishing consumers. The cars were the testing grounds for the fertile minds of company engineers. In 1929, the Cord L-29 rolled off the assembly line–using front wheel drive. The technology had been used in tanks and taxicabs, but never before in a passenger car. Today, the building constructed specially for its development is part of the national historic landmark. The company branched into racecars, not only for the publicity but because it was a natural outlet for research and development.

As sales skyrocketed, dealers opened in Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Amsterdam, London, and a host of other cities around the world. Still, in many ways, the increasingly eclipsed Auburn was most critical to the company. While generous spending fueled the Cord- Duesenberg legend, the consistently selling Auburn paid for it all.

The great depression was harsh for boutique automakers. Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler could offer decent cars at low prices. Independents like Auburn Cord Duesenberg were suddenly relics of the Roaring Twenties. E.L. Cord moved to Beverly Hills, spending less time on the affairs of the company. As the Depression deepened, sales died off rapidly and new management took over. The company made extra money stamping metal kitchen cabinets for Montgomery Ward. It began to move a substantial amount of its investment out of the automobile industry with its eye on the next big thing: aircraft.

The end came in November 1937. Dallas Winslow, a Detroit businessman, offered a bankruptcy court $85,000 for the remaining inventory of spare parts. For an extra $25,000 he bought the administration building. He ran a parts and service business for the vehicles still on the road. The 1950s brought a wave of nostalgia for the cars and a restoration boom. Winslow stayed in business supplying parts to enthusiasts. As the Auburn Cord Duesenberg legend grew, there was increasing demand. Winslow began doing restorations at the old facility, employing local people who had worked at the company during its heyday.

In 1951, the Museum of Modern Art named the Cord 810 one of the greatest car designs of all time. Far and wide, Auburns, Cords, and Duesenbergs are listed in all-time “best” lists and are commonly considered among the top classic cars ever made. A 2003 Art Deco exhibit at the Victoria and Albert Museum of Art in London included a Cord. At a classic car auction in California in 2004, a Duesenberg went for $4.5 million.

Today, stepping into the old buildings, one is able to imagine the sense of style, the electricity, and the aura of creative genius that must have prevailed. The showroom floor, triangular terrazzo tiles in white, gray-green, and oxblood, is not the sight one normally associates with the history of the auto industry, nor is the Philippine walnut in the office suites, or the multitiered metal light fixtures. But it is details like those that speak volumes about this particular history, one that will be preserved in perpetuity among America’s most cherished places.

The national historic landmark nomination for the Auburn Cord Duesenberg facility is online. The museum is online. For more information, contact Gran Roberts, the museum’s director of marketing, at (260) 925-1444, email granr@acdmuseum.org.