Auburn Cord Duesenberg Museum draws car buffs and Art Deco lovers to northern Indiana

It's difficult to know what to look at first when you enter the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Museum-the fabulous cars, or the restored Art Deco building housing the car collection.

The ACD Museum was an accidental discovery after following a sign on the freeway as we drove through Auburn, Indiana on the way home from a trip to Indianapolis. The building and the cars still wow us after many visits, and more than 20 years after discovering the museum.

Named as one of the "Top Ten Gearhead Destinations in the United States" by MSNBC in 2007, the ACD Museum draws car buffs wanting to spend hours admiring the 120-plus car collection that showcases Auburns, Cords and Duesenbergs, as well as many other unique vehicles.

The museum's home originally housed the car company headquarters and an impressive showroom built in 1930 at the mind-boggling price of $450,000. The 66,000-square-foot building, designed by Fort Wayne architect A.M. Strauss, includes three floors and a mezzanine.

Art Deco fans will love details like the hand-painted walls decorations, pendant lamps, wall sconces and intricate stair railings and grillwork.

It's the 12,000-square-foot showroom on the first level with all of its Art Deco detailing that made the biggest impression on me during our first visit there--and continues to be a highlight of every subsequent trek down to Auburn for me.

E.L. Cord was working as a filling station attendant and car mechanic in Los Angeles when he began tinkering with old Model Ts in his spare time. He raced his custom "T-Speedsters" and sold the customized racers.

Cord moved to Chicago and became a top car salesman.

Investors purchasing a failing northern Indiana car company offered Cord a management position with Auburn Automobile Co. in 1924. Cord ended up making a deal that gave him complete control, 20 percent of the profits and an option to buy the company once he managed to turn it around. By 1925, Cord purchased Auburn.

Cord added Duesnberg to his growing automobile company, purchasing that company in 1926 after it went bankrupt in 1922. Duesenberg, known for their racing vehicles, won several Indy 500 races and became the first American winner of the French Grand Prix at LeMans during the early 1920s.

Duesenberg cars were pricey. Customers usually purchased a bare chassis for around $10,000 and ordered the rest of the car to their specifications. Completed Duesys could cost $20,000-plus and reach speeds of nearly 140mph.

Hollywood stars like Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Jackie Coogan, Marion Davies, James Cagney and Greta Garbo drove Duesenbergs, Cords or Auburns. A 1934 Auburn even showed up in a James Cagney flick called "Mayor of Hell"--a car listed recently for sale at $253,000.

Jay Leno may be the most well known Duesenberg owner today, reportedly owning several of them.

Hollywood glamour aside, the company couldn't withstand steep sales drops it experienced as the country sank deeper in The Great Depression of the 1930s.

Auburn, Cord and Duesenberg struggled and closed during the waning years of the decade, with the last Dusey built 1940 (that car sold a couple of years ago for $2.8 million).

The building also fell on hard times. A business owner bought it for $25,000 in 1938, turning it into an auto repair and restoration business with machines bolted to its beautiful terrazzo floors and a thick coat of grime covering its former grandeur.

The non-profit Auburn Automotive Heritage Inc. purchased the building for $105,000 in 1974. The work of many volunteers and an additional $108,000 resulted in the restoration and reopening of the building as the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Museum that same year!

The ACD earned a place on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978 and became a National Historic Landmark in 2005.

Checking out the guest book in the first floor showroom is always interesting as nearly 2 million visitors from around the world have visited the ACD since its opening.

© Dominique King 2009 All rights reserved

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Comments

[Steve Davis]

Here in Calgary at Heritage Park we have a wonderful little car museum. They have a Cord from the 1920's that I droll over whenever I visit. They were cars ahead of their time.

[Dominique]

Steve-The Cords really were fabulous, weren't they?
I love the ACD Museum and managed to write a few stories about it this week :)

[Lorraine]

Striking photograph of the headlight on the red car. Cool art deco details on the building as well. We saw some art deco in Napier/NZ - it's fascinating!

[Dominique]

Lorraine-This is one of the more beautiful and accessible examples of Art Deco I've seen. We do have a couple of nice Art Deco-style office buildings in Detroit, too--but it isn't nearly so easy to wander around them.

[Fly Girl]

I'm not a car buff but I love art deco. That building and the art deco details are stunning. I even like those stylish cars!

[Dominique]

Fly Girl-The building -is- amazing. There are so many cool details all over--wall sconces, grill work and stair railings, painted trim... The cars are the stuff of fantasy, too. Imagining myself tooling along in one of those with a handsome movie star riding along with :)