01
Origins
Auburn's Speedster line, begun in the mid-1920s under E.L. Cord's electrifying management, distilled the company's pitch: spectacular looks and startling performance for roughly half the money the established luxury houses wanted. The pointed boattail stern, raked windscreen and sweeping wings made every Speedster a poster; eight-cylinder power made the promise honest. Cord had arrived at a moribund company in 1924 and repainted the unsold stock in bright two-tones to move it — the Speedster institutionalised that flair. The line culminated in the supercharged 851 of 1935, external exhausts blazing, each carrying a plaque certifying it had exceeded 100 mph. The Depression devoured the whole Cord empire by 1937, which only fixed the Speedsters in memory: the great American gesture of going fast, beautifully, on the way down.
1929 Auburn 8-120 Boattail Speedster rvr · Rex Gray from Southern California · CC BY 2.0
