The New Zealand art deco city of Napier is an unusual, but logical, location to find one of the world’s great sculptures on wheels - the 1936 Auburn Boat-tail Speedster. In reality our featured car is not a 1936 model at all. It’s a replica. But, it’s an unusual replica in that it was built by Auburn enthusiast Glenn Pray, who bought the original Auburn Cord Duesenberg Company in 1960.
Pray built 866 Speedsters between 1968 and 1981 and because he owned the company the cars were called Auburn and were badged accordingly. Indeed, where possible Pray used original parts from his inventory of spares that came when he bought the company.
Under the highly original appearing skin these rare ‘second generation’ Auburns were given modern underpinnings.
We saw this 1977 Boat-tail in a recent visit to Napier and it has a colourful past. After Pray completed the car it was apparently purchased by a Las Vegas nightclub for use in a show. The car would emerge from under the stage and wow the audience with a bevy of topless showgirls. When that show ended the car was placed in storage for some time before being purchased by a businessman who fell ill soon after and the car was soon purchased by its current US owner. He drove the car in California before taking it to his home in Hawaii before discovering Napier, a city that has been described as having the world’s ‘most complete and significant group of Art Deco buildings.’
“Napier was a much better fit for the Auburn than Honolulu, so we brought it over here,” said the owner. “It looks like it belongs here.” As our images show it would be difficult to argue against that logic. The Auburn is simply spectacular and like many of the other 1930's cars that abound in Napier, compliment the city’s amazing architecture.
We spotted the Auburn the week before Napier’s Art Deco weekend in February, 2011, a week when owners open their garages, take the covers off their prized machines, give them a dust off and take to the streets to clear the mechanical cobwebs. For the car enthusiast it is a great time to be in this East Coast New Zealand city.
In 1924 Auburn was a struggling car company and the owners approached Errett Lobban Cord (1894-1974) to run the company. Cord was a successful car salesman and saw a bigger opportunity, and countered the offer to run the company with an offer to purchase. The Chicago owners accepted the offer and the salesman became a manufacturer. A year later Auburn teamed up with Duesenberg, best known for its racing cars, and used the partnership to launch a line of high-priced, well-engineered cars. Plus, he added a car under his own name, the Cord, later known as the L-29. These were arguably some of the greatest cars to ever be produced in North America.
It is here the link between buildings and cars becomes obvious. Great buildings require great architects. Many of Napier’s buildings were inspired by the work of US architect Frank Lloyd Wright. In the late 1920s and early 1930s car manufacturers realised the importance of designing cars - keeping the functionality of the automobile, but adding style. Cord added designers including Gordon Buerig and Alan Leamy to his design team and their impact on Auburn, Duesenberg and Cord cars was immediate.
The 1928 Auburn Speedster, Model J Duesenbergs, 810/812 Cords and 1935-37 Auburn Speedsters resulted from Cord’s foresight in hiring imaginative designers and allowing them a blank sheet. The timing of the whole Auburn Cord Duesenberg experiment was nothing less than awful. The cars were not only magnificent in appearance, but superb mechanically. No expense was spared. But the late 1920s and early 1930s was the era of the Great Depression. Wall Street saw people jumping off high balconies as the markets collapsed. It was not a time to produce some of the most expensive cars in US history. It was an era made for cheap Fords and Chevrolets. By 1937 the great Auburn Cord Duesenberg experiment was finished, a victim like so many other car companies, of the Great Depression. Perhaps the saddest collapse of all.
The legacy left by the company was some of the most revered cars in automobile history. They include the 1936 Auburn Boat-tail Speedster. It is worth noting that the original Auburn Cord Duesenberg Art Deco headquarters in Auburn, Indiana is now home to the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Automobile Museum, a building that was made a National Historic Landmark in 2005.
Our featured car is similar, but not an exact replica of the original Auburn 852 model, perhaps the best known of all the Auburns. The original was designed by Gordon Beurig with engineering by August Duesenberg. They featured a 280 cubic inch straight 8 with Stromberg carburettor fed by a Schweitzer-Cummins Supercharger. The car was traditional in layout with the engine running north-south with a three speed gearbox and dual speed rear axle. All 1936 models were supercharged and the exhaust pipes appeared on the left side of the bonnet. Off the showroom floor the cars were capable of more than 100 mph.
The replica car has modern luxuries such as power steering, power brakes and a modern V8 engine supplied by Lincoln. A Cadillac V8 was also made available under Glenn Pray. A quick glance under the car reveals a modern independent suspension. But, these cars are not about mechanicals. They are all about style and the car as an art form. It could easily be argued the 1936 Auburn - and indeed this replica or modern take on an old classic - is the finest ever form of the automobile as a work of art.
A car similar to this wowed audiences in 1984 in the opening scene of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom with Short Round at the wheel. It was a memorable scene which showcased the car's magnificent lines.
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