Hooniverse Weekend Edition – Is This Cord L-29 Worth Saving?
Not the car in the Auction. This image is used for illustration purposes only.
Going through the Clars Auction Gallery Catalog, there was one lot that was perplexing. At the very end of the last page was a Cord L-29, that was disassembled. I know that the L-29 Cord was one of those Classic Cars that is near the top of the collectible tower, right along side its stablemates Duesenberg, and Auburn. Would you save it?
According to all things Wikipedia:
This was the first American front-wheel drive car to be offered to the public, beating the Ruxton automobile by several months, in 1929. The brainchild of former Miller engineer Carl Van Ranst, its drive system borrowed from the Indianapolis 500-dominating racers, using the same de Dion layout and inboard brakes. This allowed it to be much lower than competing cars. Both stock cars and special bodies built on the Cord chassis by American and European coachbuilders won prizes in contests worldwide.
This was a very grand automobile, from a very flamboyant company. Yes, the same company was responsible for the Duesenberg line, along with the classically understated Auburns. The L-29 was built between 1929 and 1932, with over 4,400 sold during this time period. They were very expensive at the time, with a $3,000 purchase price for the chassis in 1929 (equivalent to $38,220 today), and went up from there depending on which coach builder you selected.
Which brings up to this listing. This is a 1930 Cord L-29 Convertible Coupe, from an unknown coach builder, and it is in pieces. As you can see, there is an engine, a chassis, and various body parts strewn all over. Is it complete? Not a clue. Condition of the pieces? Nothing stated. Will the engine run? Your guess is as good as mine.
Initial auction estimates are between $30,000 and $40,000, with a starting bid of $15,000. Is this reasonable for a car that is advertised as being in bits and pieces? Only you can have your say. See the listing here.
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The only way this is in any way worth saving is if it can be verified that all the bits and pieces once started life as the same car, and I'm not sure that's possible. Even then I doubt it'll be worth all the time, expense, and trouble to put it back together. Though beautiful to look at, Cord L-29s were pretty lousy cars. Cord rushed them to market without enough testing and shaking down. The cars were underpowered and the rear weight bias meant poor traction on hills. Plus these had a reputation of eating transmissions and CV joints like candy.
I'd say yes, even if it is in many parts. L-29s are stunning automobiles when fully restored.
I couldn't disagree with Tonyola any more than I do here. At some point, things like this aren't in the "is it reliable" or "is it fun" circles of the great Venn Diagram of Automotive Distinction, but fully in the "is it important" circle, with maybe a sliver in the "is it gorgeous" circle with the early Bugattis. This car should be saved. But if it can't be, it could be the most awesome rod ever!
I agree but would go even a little further to say that it doesn't matter if this is worth saving as a car, because it is already worth saving as a work of art and piece of design history. The problem is since it is all parts and might lack a degree of provenance, if the bidding stays low this car might end up as the parts car to a more valuable complete example.
Someone showed up at the ACD festival with a hot-rodded Cord a few years ago. The ACD club met at the technical center of the company that employs me before their annual cruise through the backroads. He was pretty much vilified and the rules were changed the next year such that his Cord was not able to attend. I was one of the few people who talked to the guy. He seemed nice and while I think he was trying to thumb his nose at the club a bit with the Chevy smallblock, he also probably had the most reliable ACD car in attendance. Plus, it could smoke the tires and seeing an old Cord smoking the tires on Main Street in Auburn is still one of the coolest things I have ever seen around here (the Deusenberg drag races last year notwithstanding).
I'd say it is worth saving if it is all there if for no other reason than rarity. Someone who wants one for their collection will likely snap this up and make a car of it again. That said it won't be cheap and is not a project the average hobbyist can really afford to tackle. I am sure plenty of parts will need to be fabricated from scratch as you don't just go down to Autozone and buy a set of drive axles for a 1929 Cord.
You may not be able to buy those axles at Autozone, but it sure would be fun to try.
There is a guy up here (Auburn, IN) that rebuilds an ACD every few years. He has an old unassuming garage in the countryside, and the people who have bought his hand-formed restorations would probably be shocked if they saw the little shop, but the old guy seems to do pretty good given the prices that these cars command at auction. I've always wanted to stop in and ask him if I could document his little enterprise as it is probably a dying art (plus, the ACD cars are getting almost impossible to find to restore).
No one questions whether a derelict Bugatti, for example, is "worth saving". Why even raise the issue with a Cord? Both Cord generations, the L29 here and the later 810/12, are the products of peculiar genius that only America could have birthed and nurtured. They were, every one of them, inspired creations that came from the minds of a small group of people who were all at the right place, at the right time…Errett Cord the capitalist/entrepreneur/enabler, van Ranst the engineer who translated ideas into reality, Alan Leamy (L29), and maestro Gordon Buehrig (810/12) the artists who gave them their beauty, were the core-players in the Cord drama that will never be repeated again. Lesser remains have been resurrected into triumphant classics, far lesser.
Asking if this automobile is worth restoring is like asking if a 1954 Corvette is worth restoring. Both had a long way to go to reach their full potential, but were an incredibly bold vision of the future. For that reason alone, YES, it is worth preserving.
It can be successfully argued that quite a few of today's priceless, esteemed classics were "pretty lousy cars" in the strict sense of the term. As many of Le Patron's Bugatti creations were recalcitrant, obsolescent mechanical dogs on the day they left Molsheim as weren't, early Ferraris were ill-handling cars with bad brakes that relied upon high-revving horsepower for their speed, the first Lincoln Continentals were just gussied-up Mercurys, etc etc. The L29, along with the aforementioned automobiles, transcends the hard objectivism of grading them for their technical excellence, with qualities of design and heritage that lift their mundane nuts-and-bolts to the automotive pinnacle simply by virtue of their extraordinary beauty, and in the Cord's case, its landmark pioneering of front-drive application, however flawed it may have been. Sure, this car, or BITS of cars, may never again be one whole Cord L29, but the bits that remain are definitely worth saving and using to perhaps resurrect some other L29 that is a better candidate for a full restoration. Bad CV joints or no, the Cord L29 was, and is, one of the ultimate automotive achievements of the 20th century.
No question of the Cord's beauty or historical importance, but I still think that unless this car has a truly rare or one-of-a-kind body, it would be a wiser choice to make it a source of parts for the whole Cords that still exist. Over 4,400 L-29s were built and there are still a fair number around – it's not like this car is a disassembled Bugatti Royale or something.
Is it real? Do the parts amount to a majority of the original, and did they come from the same car? I've got a soft spot for anything E L Cord did, but there need to be some limits. We're at a point where folks build brand new Ferrari F1 cars around a lugnut that was in a garage where Fangio once stopped off to pee while depositing his paycheck one Tuesday in 1954. The L-29 was iconic and tremendously important, but I'd need some convincing before I'd agree that this pile of parts is really a car. Doesn't mean I want them to be scrap…
I think we're closer to agreeing on this issue than not.
I wouldn't hesitate a second to start building that thing. Those cars are beautiful, rare, luxurious, and huge! What is there not to love? Do the labor yourself and it's basically a giant metal driveable bank account with a better than 3% interest rate.