The Indiana Empire That Built Both

In 1924, a 30-year-old Missouri car salesman named Errett Lobban Cord was hired to save the dying Auburn Automobile Company in Auburn, Indiana. He didn't just save it; by 1929 he had built it into the holding company at the center of an industrial empire of 150+ businesses. The Cord Corporation owned, all at once, three of the great American luxury car names (Auburn, Cord, Duesenberg), the engine builder powering them (Lycoming), the airline that became American Airlines, and Stinson Aircraft Company. The cross-pollination shows up in the metal. The Cord 810 of 1936, widely considered one of the most beautiful cars ever made, has hidden retractable headlamps that were originally adapted from Stinson airplane landing lights. Lycoming built both the radials that pulled Stinson Reliants and the straight-eights that pushed Auburn speedsters. By 1937, an SEC investigation forced Cord to sell everything; Auburn shut its doors that fall. But the 1929 Art Deco Auburn Automobile Company headquarters, a National Historic Landmark, survived as the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Automobile Museum, just a mile from KGWB. Walk inside and you can see the cars Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, and Frank Lloyd Wright owned, designed by people who also drew airplanes. The Labor Day Auburn Auction draws 100,000 collectors. Crew car distance from the ramp.