by Bill Vance

Some automobile designs are classics, so pure, elegant and organically integrated that they become styling milestones. One was the 810/812 Cord built by the Auburn Automobile Co. of Auburn, Indiana in 1936 and ‘37.

The 810 was intended, by Auburn’s president Errett Lobban Cord to bridge the gap between the company’s affordable Auburn and its expensive Duesenberg. It bristled with technical and styling innovations. It had front-wheel drive, and its four-speed transmission’s ratios were chosen using a pre-selector switch mounted on the steering column. The gears were shifted electro-pneumatically when the clutch was dipped.

Stylist Gordon Buehrig took advantage of the unit construction and front-wheel drive to fashion a shape that was sleek, and low enough to dispense with running boards. He made the coffin-shaped nose long and unadorned, and wrapped a simple yet elegant seven-bar grille around the lower part of the hood from door to door.

He also concealed the headlamps behind small crank-open doors in the fenders, an industry first.

Although the Cord was a styling tour de force, it failed for several reasons, among them the high price, the mechanical complexity that led to some problems, and the fact that the Depression was still hurting the economy.

With the failure of the Auburn Automobile Co., its Cord body dies and other tooling became available at a favourable price. The outstanding styling was not forgotten, especially by an auto entrepreneur by the name of Norman DeVaux. He felt that the styling was too good to waste, and that with a simpler, less expensive powertrain it could be successful.

DeVaux lacked the resources to pursue the Cord body idea on his own, so he approached Graham-Paige Motors Corp. of Detroit to see if they would be interested in producing a less expensive rear-wheel drive version of the Cord design.

Financially pressed Graham thought the concept had merit, but had to decline, suggesting that the Hupp Motor Corporation of Detroit might be interested. DeVaux approached Hupp, whose cars had been selling slowly, and they liked the idea of a Cord-based Hupmobile. They took DeVaux on as general manager.

Devaux acquired the Cord dies and jigs, and the result was the 1939 Hupmobile Junior Six. Not surprisingly, the Junior Six looked uncannily like the Cord 810, the principal difference being a slightly altered grille and the exposed headlamps located between the fenders and the hood.

Hupp management liked the car but wanted something more distinctive. John Tjaarda, who had styled the Lincoln Zephyr for the Ford Motor Company, was engaged to give the “Hupmobile-Cord” a different face. He rounded the hood and designed a new three-piece grille, creating a model called the Hupmobile Skylark.

The Skylark was a styling sensation. When it appeared at the New York Auto Show in early 1939 it received an overwhelming response, resulting in some 6,000 orders.

Unfortunately, Hupp wasn’t able to fill them. The Cord body was more complicated to build than those of the Hupmobiles. The roof, for example, was fabricated from several pieces of steel because there wasn’t a die large enough to stamp it out in one pressing. By August of 1939 only 35 very expensive Skylark prototypes had been built.

Hupp was on the ropes. The beautiful Skylark had dried up demand for its other models, and it had almost no cash flow. At this point help appeared when Graham-Paige president Joseph Graham approached Hupp with an idea: Graham-Paige would build Hupmobile Skylarks and sell them back to Hupp. In return, Hupp would give Graham access to the Cord dies so that Graham could use them to build a similar car of its own.

Hupp agreed, and production of Hupmobile Skylarks was moved to the Graham-Paige plant in Dearborn, Michigan. The Graham-Paige version, virtually identical to the Skylark, was called the Graham Hollywood.

But production difficulties were again encountered. Graham was not accustomed to unit construction bodies, and a new assembly line had to be installed. This delayed production until mid-1940.

The delay caused buyer interest to cool, and Hupp, its 6,000 orders gone, succumbed to bankruptcy in the summer of 1940. Graham-Paige continued to produce the Hollywood model until September, when it too stopped production.

Just over 300 Hupmobile Skylarks and 1,860 Graham Hollywoods were produced before the Buehrig-styled design disappeared for good. They were beautiful cars, and with adequate production facilities would very likely have been successful. Their legacy lives on as an automotive styling benchmark.