CORD. Its manner of going was smooth, silent, surprisingly quick, and it looked wonderful as it move

It must have been in 1937, in late May, because we were on our way to Indianapolis for the "500." We were in a. Plymouth, of all things, and going about as fast as it would move over the flat roads west of the Alleghenies—say, 80 or so.

A Cord came up behind us, pulled out, passed, and disappeared ahead. Its manner of going was smooth, silent, surprisingly quick, and it looked wonderful as it moved off ahead of us doing pretty close to 100. My brother, a friend of his, and I main-tained, as I remember, a respectful silence. It had been our habit to scorn Cords.

At that time we thought that foreign machines, Bentleys and Alfas and such, were the only motorcars worth bothering with. We were particularly disdainful of the Cord for several reasons. First, it was kin to the cheap and vulgar Auburn. (It was also related to the Duesenberg, but that wasn't a mark against it.) Further, we felt it was over-styled, too "designy," too Hollywood.

But, in my own case, what annoyed me most about the Cord was the view under its coffin shaped hood. If ever there was a rat's nest of pipes and wiring and cast iron in front of a cheap tin firewall, the Cord's engine com-partment was it. I had been spoiled by the austere beauty of the views under the hoods of cars like Hispanos or Bugattis.

Its handling was away ahead of anything Detroit put out thirty years ago. It was no Alfa, but it certainly was no Buick, either. It didn't roll or wallow, its independent front suspension being just stiff enough. On a corner, you knew you were handling a front-drive machine and didn't take your foot off in mid-passage. It was rather more sensitive in this way than a modern Toro-nado, for example. The gear shift, unfortunately, was terrible.

The gearbox was way out forward, ahead of the V-8 Lycoming engine, and rather than use a long manual linkage the gears were shifted by a Bendix vacuum cylinder lying on top of the box. To shift you worked a miniature lever in a gate. This activated electrical switch gear which, by means of relays, worked the vacuum cylinder when you took your foot off the gas and declutched. The effect was gear pre-selection, since you could choose a gear but not change into it unless you worked the clutch.

But the whole operation was abysmally slow and annoying. The blown 812 Cord nevertheless was fast for its day: 110 mph was possible and 0 to 60 in under 14 seconds. And the Cord felt stable even at its maximum. The 812 Cord (and the unblown 810) had other nice features: a flat floor aft was one; a near-noiseless body due to one of the first successful attempts at unit construction was another.

But it was its unusually well-designed and really beautiful instrument panel that impressed people—and rightly so. In a day when most instrument boards tried to look like cheap radio sets, with instruments of every tortured shape except honest circles, the Cord's airplane-like panel of engine-turned metal with a rev counter, a speedometer, and oil, water, and electrical gauges looked great. It still looks great.

Most people loved the Cord 810 and 812 bodies (the centrifugally blown 812 had chromed outside exhaust pipes), and many present-day Cord lovers still think it a great design. But the body had a serious fault—poor visibility. Its windshield was just too small a slit for safety; its rear window was almost nonexistent. The Cord 810, which appeared in 1936, was not E. L. Cord's first attempt at a front-drive car.

In 1929 he had brought out an early F.W.D. machine, the L 29 Cord. This L 29 used a straight-eight Lycoming engine of 125 hp, a solid front axle, and dual quarter-elliptic front springing. Its ra-diator shape and the lines of its front fen-ders were more than vaguely like those of its sister cars, the Auburn and the Duesenberg. This machine used early types of universal joint in its drive line, which ofttimes gave trouble.

Further, its weight distribution was such that climbing slippery hills was some-times a fairly chancy business, though not quite so tricky as the salesmen of rival makes made it out to be. This whispering campaign, a fairly high price ($3,095 and up), and the depression killed the L 29 in 1932, but not before 4,429 were sold. In the fall of 1935 Erret Cord tried again with the Model 810. The independently sprung chassis, a new type of efficient uni-versal joint, and a V-8 engine made the 810 a far better machine than the old L 29. But it was the new bodywork by Gordon M. Buehrig that bowled people over.

The alligator hood, the unique horizontal louvres, the racy pontoon fenders, the concealed wind-out headlights made the new ultra-low Cord a sensation. Oddly, Buehrig had first designed his revolutionary coachwork for a proposed Baby Duesenberg. As the Duesenberg project was nearing fruition, Buehrig was hastily called away to do some rush redesigning for Auburn, which was in dire straits. (Auburn's 1934 model had been a disaster.) After helping to pull Auburn out of its hole he went back to work on the Baby Duesenberg and was surprised to find that the brass had had some second thoughts.

The infant Duesenberg was now to be a front drive machine called a Cord. But the lovely new Cord didn't sell too well, either. Although priced between $2,000 and $3,600, depending on the model, it was too expensive in a day when you could buy a big Buick for $885. In the two years of its existence fewer than 2,500 Cords were sold.