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Published by the Colorado Region Classic Car Club of AmericaSummer 2019 Volume 66 Issue 2

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Featured Garage Tour NY CARavan ACC Concours E L Cord Part IV

Classicist The Colorado

The Colorado Classicist2

Front CoverColumbines, the Colorado state flower, along the Alpine Loop Scenic Byway. Photo from Colorado.com

Back CoverA Civil War monument

at West Point Acadamyon the NY Legends CARavan

The first tour of the season stopped at Terry and Kay Johnson’s front lawnto see Terry’s collection, some of which are seen here.

It was a picture-perfect Colorado day!An article on it starts on page 8.

GaraGe Tour

Colorado Region Classic Car Club of America 3

2019 Board of Managers Colorado Region CCCADirector Tom Kostelecky 303 978-1777 [email protected]

Assistant Director and Membership Chairman

Davis McCann 303 841-9265 [email protected]

Secretary Frank Keller 303 972-6420 [email protected]

Treasurer Lonnie Fallin 303 904-8080 [email protected]

Web Site Master Shiela Koppenheffer 303 457-3821 [email protected]

Classicist Editor Tom Goyne 303 478-0068 [email protected]

Collector Car Council of Colo Rep Don Leach 720 250-7450

Don Braden 303 744-8848 [email protected]

Ron Damiana 303 985-4149 [email protected]

Lou Ficco 303 887-4754 [email protected]

Tony Ficco 303 431-6492 [email protected]

Tim Gilmartin 303 807-8397 [email protected]

The Established 1954

Colorado ClassicistP u b l i s h e d b y t h e C o l o r a d o R e g i o n o f t h e C l a s s i c C a r C l u b o f A m e r i c a

Table of Contents

Message from the Director Page 4

Message from the Editor Page 5

Regional and National Events Page 6

Letters and Regional News Page 6

Spring Garage Tour Page 8

E. L. Cord Empire, Part IV Page 12

New York Legends CARavan Page 16

Ability Connection Colorado Concours Page 24

Tech Tips Page 27

Mystery Photo 1

The Colorado Classicist is published by the Colorado Region, Inc., of the Classic Car Club of America as an informative publication for its membership.

The Colorado Region was chartered as a Region of the Classic Car Club of Amer-ica in 1954. The Colorado Region, Inc., of the Classic Car Club of America, a Colorado non-profit Corporation, was in-corporated and granted a charter by the Classic Car Club of America in 1990.

The Classic Car Club of America is a non-profit organization incorporated in the State of New York. The Club seeks to further the restoration and preservation of distinctive motor cars manufactured from 1915 through 1948, to provide a channel of communication for those interested in such cars, and to bring together in good fellowship all who own or admire these finest examples of automotive craftsman-ship. The sole requirement for member-ship is a demonstrable interest in Classic cars. National Club membership is re-quired to become a Regional member.

It should be noted that this publication is about the events and correspondence for the membership of the Colorado Region, Inc., and may include some technical ar-ticles and other articles of automotive in-terest. The correctness and applicability of the information contained in the arti-cles is the sole responsibility of the au-thor of the article. The Colorado Region, Inc. is not responsible for the content of such articles or problems that may arise from following the information in the ar-ticles.

Full Classic® is a registered trademark of the Classic Car Club of America. In this publication a car named as Classic or Full Classic is a Full Classic® as recognized by the Classic Car Club of America, how-ever, some cars depicted herein may be non-Classic.


M e s s a g e f r o m t h e

DIRECTORTom Kostelecky

Our summer Classic driving tours are off to a good start to new destinations with new and old friends. On May 4th we had a very successful garage tour through a collector car

sales and restoration shop called Cars Remember When, then visit-ing the garages of Ron Damiana and Terry Johnson and viewing all of their cars and memorabilia. I want to sincerely thank Ron and Terry for opening up their garages to the club, and to Cars Remem-ber When for sharing their fine facility. We ended this tour with a delightful and delicious lunch at Scileppi’s restaurant in Castle Rock.

While we were at Cars Remember When, Harry Lindsay from the Early Ford V-8 Club invited the Classic Car Club of Colorado to join them on their upcoming garage tour. Some of us did just that. Our first stop was at the John Metcalf Hot Rod Shop. John previ-ously worked with RCR, the Richard Childress Racing NASCAR facility in Charlotte, NC. Then we went to Pete Lansing’s unbe-lievable car collection of the 50s. These cars brought back many fond memories to us all. Thanks to Pete for allowing our club to tour his facility and thank you Harry for inviting us on your garage tour.

On June 1, Lonnie Fallin, Lou Ficco and Frank Keller put together a summer tour of two Denver-area manufacturing companies. First stop was Vieri Gaines’ companies, Winberg Crankshafts, GRP Connecting Rods, Western Motor Sports and Gibtec Pistons. They build high-end parts only for race cars and are the premier supplier of these components. Their reputation is enviable. Vieri Gaines has raced pro stock cars in the NHRA for over 20 years. Thank you Vieri for the wonderful tour!

The next business we visited was Bye Aerospace near Centennial airport where Charlie Johnson, the COO, gave us a tour of their facility and showed us the electric airplane that they are developing. Their electric airplane has already flown and is now in the FAA certification process, and they have over 200 orders from different commercial airlines to date. It is to be used for training new pilots. Thank you so much Charlie for an interesting tour.

Looking forward, Lou and Tony Ficco are planning a fall tour on Sept 5-8 which will give another great opportunity to drive our Classic cars and take part in an event that we believe is going to be outstanding. Some out-of-state members are already making their arrangements to come and be a part of this tour. We will be going to the Concours d’Elegance in downtown Vail where you will be able to show your car. You do need to register soon, however. Call Lou Ficco regard-ing hotel reservations and go to the Vail Concours website to register for the show at www.Vailautomotiveclassic.com. Other things we are going to do on this tour is a BBQ on the prairie and a beautiful drive to Steamboat

ediTorial CommenTs

▶ Page 5


M e s s a g e f r o m t h e

EDITORTom Goyne

Despite snow into late-April, we did have a relatively mild winter here in Denver. The flowers are now in full bloom and I, for one, am ready to smell the roses and for summer

weather. That late snow was not to my liking.

Our club tours this year have been good. Tom mentioned them in his column on the previous page and you can read full reports in this issue and in the next issue. The article on the garage tour starts on page 8.

Along with our local tours, I attended the New York Legends CAR-avan on the east coast in May and enjoyed it greatly. We saw a lot of great car collections, some were really extraordinary, and visited interesting places as well. It was great fun charging around the Catskills and the Adirondacks in my Packard; the roads in that part of the country were made for our cars. The only negative was the rain. It rained every day but two, but that did give us an appreci-ation for the sun on those days. One good thing about the rain is that it proved out all the good work Jim at Auto Weave Upholstery did on my top...no leaks at all, would you believe. I’ve never had a leak-free top before! An article on the CARavan starts on page 16.

I thought you might be interested in some statistics about the Full Classics in our region...There are 140 cars listed in the directory. The most common marque is Packard with 52, then comes Cadillac with 33, Cord with 9, Rolls-Royce with 6, Duesenberg and Lincoln with 5 each, and then 17 other makes with between 1 and 3 each. The most common year/marque combination is 1937 Packard with 14, followed by 1941 Cadillac with 12 and 1934 Packard with 9. So now don’t let anyone tell you that you don’t know everything there is to know about our region. See you soon!

Tom Goyne, Editor Proofreader: Joe Malaney

ediTorial CommenTs

Springs and along the way enjoy other activities with your fellow club members.

Thanks for your participation in our tours. They take a lot of time and planning by your board members but provide a lot of great Classic Car Club memories. Hope to see you on the fall tour! Tom Kostelecky, Director


National EventsCheck your Classic Car Bulletin or classiccarclub.org for the latest details

August 18 Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance

September 9 - 17 Pacific Northwest Region CARavan

September 14 Cobble Beach, Ontario, Canada Grand Classic

Colorado and Regional EventsIf you are interested in attending a Board of Managers’ meeting, please call one of the board

members for time and location. The Board generally meets on a Thursday at 7:00 PM.August 24 Morgan Adams Concours and Air Show, Centennial Airport

September 5 - 8 Mini-CARavan to the Vail Automotive Classic Concours and Air Show

September 26 - 29 Telluride Cars and Colors Concours

November 7 Annual Meeting, Romano’s Restaurant

December 8 Christmas Party, Rolling Hills Country Club

Letters to the Editor and Regional News

THE CORD EMPIRE-From the last issue

Your editor received this note from member Tim Gilmartin on the last issue’s series of articles on the Cord 810/812. He also lent me two magnificent tomes on Cord, Cord Complete, The Story of the Models 810 and 812 by Josh B. Malks; and Errett Lobban Cord, His Empire His Motorcars by Grif-fith Borgeson. These two books represent massive amounts of research by many knowledgeable people into E. L. Cord and his empire and reading them stirred your editor to do a follow-up article on Cord, especially on the “Baby Duesen-berg,” which was the prototype of the Cord 810. This arti-cle starts on page 12. I am very thankful to Tim for bringing this up. It is always good to get misinformation corrected!

I read with great interest your article on Cord. May I politely say there were a few mistakes in the article. Attached are drawings and photos of the real Baby Duesenberg. I have never seen the drawing of “it” that was in the article, so I

can’t say where that came from. Randy Ema, our Club’s guru and historian, said that the Baby was sold for scrap and definitely destroyed as that was done with prototypes back then. Also, you said there was a hostile takeover in 1937 by an American aristocrat? First I heard about that, and who was the aristocrat? I’m just trying to correct the record; not trying to be a know it all. If you find something that contra-dicts me, please advise.

CORDially, Tim Gilmartin, Centennial, CO

____

MYSTERY PHOTO-From the last issue

A number of people correctly identified the mystery photo in the last issue. Here are some of the responses.

The first thing I saw on the back of the cover of the recent

evenTs and news


The lawman as Dick, David and Jim have said, is Wyatt Earp. The car is not his, however. It belonged to Earp’s good friend, film star William S. Hart. After the gunfight at the O. K. Corral in Tombstone, Wyatt Earp moved around the West, eventually settling in California with Josephine Marcus, with whom he would spend the next 40 years. Over the years, he made a living by gambling, saloon-keeping, mining and real estate speculation. He was a minor celebri-ty even in his lifetime and spent much time hobnobbing with Hollywood western stars such as Tom Mix and William S. Hart and author Jack London. Earp died in Los Angeles in January 1929, at the age of 80. He famously said of Tomb-stone comparing it with LA, “It (Tombstone) was not half as bad as Los Angeles.” Amen to that. -ed.

Thanks to our sponsorsTo place an ad in the Classicist,

call or email the editor

issue of the Classicist was a picture of Wyatt Earp, western lawman. In the book I have of Fred Dodge’s life (1854-1938) is the same picture of Wyatt Earp. Fred Dodge was a Wells Fargo agent, the constable of Tombstone, Arizona, and Texas cattleman.

Dick Veghte, Littleton, CO

Fred Dodge went to work as an undercover agent for Wells Fargo, working in California, Nevada and Arizona. In December, 1879, he was working in Tombstone, Arizona and recommended that Wyatt Earp be hired as a guard and messenger for the stage line. The two quick-ly became good friends and Dodge supported Wyatt and his brothers in

their troubles in Tombstone after the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral and during the Earp Vendetta Ride. He and Wyatt remained friends the rest of their lives. -ed.

The man in the mystery photo is Wyatt Earp.P.S., Your magazine is outstanding!

David Schultz, CCCA Past President The mystery photo was easy for me since he is a relative. Wy-att Earp was first cousin to Martha Earp, my grea t -grea t grandmother. H o w e v e r , no one on my side of the fami-ly owned a Packard until I bought my ‘41 in 1986. A tired old model T was a more likely car, since they continued to farm the same poor Missouri dirt. Congratulations for first place McManus Publications Award. Well deserved! Another great Classi-cist, I read it cover to cover.

Jim Hull, Estes Park, CO

evenTs and news

Mini-CARavan

Plan on attending the Mini-CARavan to Vail on September 5 through 8.

Fall colors should be at their best and the weather

perfect.

Contact Lou Ficco at303 887-4754 for more info.


After nearly a week of clouds, rain and even snow, it was a beautiful spring Saturday. The panoramic shot above was taken in Terry Johnson’s front yard

and it was pure heaven. The grass was luxuriant and green, trees were in bloom and starting to green-up and the tem-perature a pleasant 65 degrees. In other words, a perfect day. We don’t always get these kind of days for our annual garage tour, but this year it could not have been better.

Ton Kostelecky and Frank Keller organized the tour to three garages this year. First we went to the shop of “Cars Re-member When” on south Santa Fe Drive. This is a fairly new facility that specializes in car sales and minor res-toration. Their emphasis is, as you can appreciate, where the market is...1960s, ‘70’s, 80s automobiles, though there were a few others for sale there as well. We

On this page are shots of the “Cars Remember When” facility and three of the more unusual cars for sale.

Spring Garage TourBy Tom Goyne

reGional meeT

▶ Page 10


reGional meeT

Lunch at Scileppi’s Restaurant in Castle Rock was excellent. Our group took over most of the “church” area of the eatery. This stone structure was built in the 1800s as a Catholic chapel.

Unseen in the photo is the confessional booth, now a cozy table for two.

Left is the traditional yearly photo of Lonnie Fallin and his son-in-Law Troy and grandson Ethan, taken in Ron Damiana’s garage. Lonnie gets grayer; Ethan gets taller; and Troy luckily stays the same. The

“Fisk Boy --- Time to Re-Tire” statue is part of Ron Damiana’s

collection.


“Bugsy” Damiana and his henchmen kept a watch over his collection.One doesn’t fool with them, or with his pin-up calendars, below.

What appears to be two alligators snarling at each other is really Don Braden’s 6o-Special giving a jump start to Frank Keller’s convertible.

Photo courtesy of Betsy Fallin.

were given a tour of their shops and shown a number of cars with restoration or modifica-tions or hop-ups in progress. Their work looks excellent! On the main display floor, there were around fifty cars for sale which were ar-ranged for easy viewing. Ray Yanguez told us that when they opened most of their sales were over the internet, but now most are walk-ins.

After seeing the “Cars Remember When” facility, we adjourned to Ran Damiana’s garage to see his collection. He has some very fine Classics and other cars, and also a great collection of mosaic emblems and 1940s and ‘50s pin-up calendars, some of which are shown below.


Our last stop before lunch was at Terry Johnson’s garage. Terry’s collection changes regularly and it was a pleasure to see the latest acquisitions as well as the ones he will keep forever. Two of the recent ones are a 1970s Cadillac station wagon, a 1 of 11 special, and a Rolls-Royce Phantom Con-vertible. Terry had moved his cars out of the garage and displayed them around the front lawn for better viewing. It was the perfect springtime setting for the cars.

Lunch was at Tom Kostelecky’s son-in-law’s restaurant, Scileppi’s, in Castle Rock. We took over most of what used to be a small stone Catholic chapel built in the 1800s. This structure was an integral part of the restaurant and made a very charming setting for the meal. I am happy to report that there was nothing but good reviews from everyone on the quality of the food and service! ■

On this page are shots of the cars in Terry Johnson’s yard.


These four views are of the first “Auburn Stream Line Body” delivered by coachbuilder A. H. Walker in secret on April 3, 1934 to the Duesenberg factory, and mounted on an Auburn Eight chassis. It is designer Gordon Buehrig’s embodiment of Harold Ames’ “Baby Duesenberg” vision. Note that it has very low windows, inboard headlights which nearly cover

the outboard radiators when opened, and no trunk, rear bumper or tail lights.

The E. L. Cord EmpirePa rt I V, T h e “ B a b y D u e s e n b e r g ”

A n d t h e Ta k e o v e r o f t h e C o r d C o r p o r at i o n

feaTured marque

If you read Tim Gilmartin’s letter to the editor on page 6 you will know that there were errors in the last issue’s Cord arti-cles. I hope this sets them straight. There are two definitive books on E. L. Cord and they were generously loaned to me by Tim and used extensively in putting this article together. The books are: Cord Complete, The Story of the Models 810 and 812 by Josh B. Malks; and Errett Lobban Cord, His Em-pire His Motorcars by Griffith Borgeson.

The “Baby Duesenberg”

In 1926 E. L. Cord hired Harold T. Ames as the Sales Manager of Duesenberg, Inc. Later he was appointed president. He was vigorous and imaginative and highly

respected by his employees. By 1933, the Great Depression was in full swing and Ames was well aware that other luxury car manufacturers were hedging their bets by offering less expensive models which would trade on the reputation of the more expensive models. Ames, in particular, admired Ca-


This is a watercolor rendering by Paul Reuter-Lorenzen (of the Au-burn Art and Body studio) of a hybrid Auburn/Cord design designated E-294 that utilized an Auburn 653 sedan rear half mated to the new front drive Cord. A clay model and full prototype were completed in early 1935. The design appears to be an attempt at reducing tool-ing costs, though in fact the completed prototype functioned as a

“mule” to test out various components, such as the rear axle design. A different rendering of the car was shown in the last issue of the

Classicist and was mislabeled as the “Baby Duesenberg.”

dillac Division’s LaSalle and sought to follow the Cadillac lead at Duesenberg with what became known as the “Baby Duesenberg.” He envisioned this car as a modified Auburn chassis with a high-performance engine and a “tricky body” (as he called it) for that Auburn chassis.

Ford had just introduced its V-8 engine and the V-8 moniker quickly became synonymous with high-performance. Ames, therefore, wanted a V-8 for his Baby Duesy and approached Lycoming (a Cord subsidiary) for a sample engine in 1933.

The Cord L-29 was America’s first production front wheel drive automobile and it is known via surviving memos from Ames to Herb Snow (VP of Engineering at Auburn) that most of the Auburn engineering staff’s time from 1933 onward was spent on front wheel drive conceptual work. This front drive project was designated E-278. But it is also known that Ames and Snow had considered, but not settled on, front drive for the Baby Duesy...overlapping engine de-signs for both rear and front drive were pursued well into early 1935 and of course, the original Baby Duesy prototype was rear drive.

To design Ames “tricky body,” Gordon Buehrig was rehired from GM in the summer of 1933 (Buehrig had been the chief designer at Duesenberg for three years and had designed nearly half the bodies mounted on the Model J chassis). But because of Auburn’s tanking sales, he was first put to work redesigning that line for the 1935 and ‘36 models.

By late 1933, however, Buehrig was back at it on the Baby Duesy and had completed a one-eighth scale rendering and clay model. Auburn placed an order with coach-builder A. H. Walker for a prototype body in January 1934, and also placed an order for an Auburn eight-cylinder chassis the following month. The two were mated at the Duesenberg factory in Indianap-olis in April 1934. The Duesenberg facility was used rather than Auburn to maintain project secrecy. That car is shown in the photos on the previous page. It features Buehrig’s twin outboard radiators as engineered by Augie Duesenberg,

“venetian blind” louvers around the bottom of the alligator hood, headlights concealed on the inside of the torpedo fend-ers, spare tire concealed in a rear compartment, rear-hinged doors, and a very small split cathedral rear window.

It had been apparent for some time to Harold Ames that the Baby Duesy project and the E-278 front drive project at Auburn should be combined and moved to Auburn, and Ames reluctantly made that decision, which was carried out some 12 weeks after the Baby Duesy was completed at the Duesenberg factory.

Gordon Buehrig and Denny Duesenberg, Fred’s son, dou-ble-dated on Saturday night June 23, 1934 in Indianapolis. After they had escorted the ladies home that evening, they drove to the Duesenberg plant, picked up that no-longer Duesenberg prototype and drove it to the Auburn plant in the dark to preserve its secrecy. Denny drove and Gordon fol-lowed in his customized Ford Model A Victoria. They found that with the retractable headlights open they had to stop ev-ery twenty miles to let the car cool off. The lights blocked air flow to the outboard radiators. The prototype was proba-bly never driven after this though it served its purpose well.

The Prototype 810 Cords

By March or April 1935 the decision had been made at Auburn to construct five pro-totype cars with these features: front drive, unibody construction (though the term “uni-body” was not yet in-vented...it was called “monocoque”), solid rear axle, the largest of the Lycoming V-8s, a four-speed trans-mission, the Bendix pre-selector shifter, and the “pure” Bueh-rig body (i.e., not the hybrid shown on this

page). Soon after, many changes were proposed: moving the headlights from their inboard position to the front of the fenders, making the windows larger and the front ones open-ing, which required moving the wipers to the top, adding a cowl vent on the driver’s side with matching hatch on the passenger’s side for the water and oil fill caps, mounting both rear and front doors on the center pillar with hidden


hinges, adding a trunk lid, license plate provision and tail lights.

While these changes were being made, the process of do-ing all of the detail design and drawings, building temporary tooling, finding vendors and coercing them to deliver on an impossible schedule, and then finally putting parts together, progressed frantically. They had only a few weeks before the car’s introduction at the New York Auto Show. Amaz-ingly the first two prototypes were completed in June 1935, and on July 27 prototype #2 was sent on its shakedown drive from Auburn to Los Angeles so E. L. Cord could see it first hand. He liked it. He drove the car around Los Angeles roads extensively and made some suggestions (perhaps more like orders) on improvements. Notable ones were the addition of a rear roll bar, lowering the car 3/4”, providing a larger battery to improve shifting at idle, and changing the front wheel caster angle to improve steering.

The 810 prototypes were shown to wild acclaim at the Los Angeles and New York auto shows, and orders came rolling in. But there was still all of the production engineering to be done on the cars, not to mention fixing the design flaws, and so promised delivery dates came and went. The competition kept hammering at their customers with phrases like, “You don’t want to risk your money on a new untried automo-bile,” and they had the intended effect. Many orders were canceled. Then when teething problems began to be evident in the new Cord, sales fell further. In the end, barely more than 1,000 810s were sold. The 812 did somewhat better, but still only about 2,000 of them were delivered in total.

The Takeover of the Cord Empire

By the end of 1933 there were only two of the many hold-ings in the Cord Corporation which were making money, Yellow Cab of Chicago and Avco. (Avco was a conglomer-ation of airline and airplane companies and by far the most valuable.) Auburn and Duesenberg were hemorrhaging cash and neither company was selling nearly enough cars to be profitable. 1934 and ‘35 were even worse for them. E. L. was not involved in the daily running of his company by this time. He and his family had escaped to England either because of kidnapping threats or because of the scrutiny of his stock manipulation by the SEC and Senate Munitions In-vestigating Committee, or perhaps because of both. During this period E. L. had intimated to friends and family that he might get out of the Cord Corp. His son Charley said, “He was a nervous basket case.”

E. L. had been meeting with a group during 1937 and possi-bly earlier, regarding the sale of the Cord Corporation. This group included Victor Emanuel, a tough and successful en-

trepreneur, born to riches and aristocratic (E. L. had known him for some time), John “U-Drive” Hertz, and a group of men who represented Schroder, Rockefeller & Co, New York bankers. Emanuel, in particular, had his eye on the Cord Corp because his colossal United States Electric Power Company was disintegrating rapidly as a result of the De-pression and Roosevelt’s Public Utilities Holding Company Act of 1935. Emanuel looked around for fresh territory and found it in the Cord Corp. The same held true for Hertz. He had built the Yellow Cab and Coach Company and then sold it to GM. Later he bought TWA and was trying to take over Eastern Airlines. His interest was in Cord’s sprawling avia-tion branch and the taxi business, though there was another darker side to Hertz’s interest in Cord...In an earlier nearly incomprehensible set of maneuvers (at least to this writer) E. L. Cord was able to take over Avco as a result of Avco’s ear-lier takeover of E. L.’s Century Air Lines. Hertz was thwart-ed by this in his efforts to get further into the airline business and felt the “adversary had to be neutralized,” and by that he meant that E. L had to go.

At the same time, the SEC was preparing an injunction against E. L for stock manipulation in the Checker Cab and other companies and undoubtedly Emanuel and Hertz used this to their great advantage in the negotiations with Cord. On August 5, 1937 the sale was announced in a New York Times headline, “E. L. CORD INTEREST TO BE SOLD TODAY. Ranking Group to Acquire Control of Auto, Avi-ation and Shipbuilding Companies.” The Ranking Group consisted of Emanuel, Hertz, and Schroder, Rockefeller & Co. Two days later the Times reported “The SEC injunc-tion issued in the Federal Court of Chicago yesterday gives a further dramatic touch to the termination of Mr. Cord’s career as an important American industrialist.” Time Maga-zine said this, “...to a cunning infighter like Victor Emanuel, with the well-heeled Schroders again in his corner, it was the work of only a few months to knock out Cord and take over the company in August 1937.” Griffith Borgeson in his book called it “a nice, legal takeover play.”

Emanuel, Hertz and the Schroders were tough, ruthless ne-gotiators, to the point that this has been described as a hostile takeover, yet E. L. Cord was just as cunning and came out very well indeed. Cord sold his interest in the Cord Corpora-tion for $2,632,000, which in today’s dollars is $44,000,000! And by selling his interests and resigning from the board, he effectively blunted the SEC injunctions.

A new board was elected for the Cord Corp with Victor Emanuel as chairman and Lou Manning as president. Man-ning was a long-time trusted employee of E. L. Cord and the new board trusted him to continue to run the companies well. And he did. Within a scant two years, Auburn and


Prototype #2 in front of E. L. Cord’s mansion in Beverly Hillsafter the cross-country drive from Auburn.

Despite issues which needed fixing, the engineers who made the trip loved it. George Kublin said he was “Chuck full of enthusiasm” for it during the trip.

Duesenberg were liquidated, other of Cord’s holdings were sold and the investors fully amortized their investment. E. L. retired to his Beverly Hills mansion and parlayed his mil-lions into even more riches, primarily through real estate

trading in Beverly Hills. Later, he took up legal residence in Nevada and became a respected state Senator known for, surprisingly enough, consensus-building. ■


These cars were all in the relatively unknown but superb Northeast Classic Car Museum at Norwich, NY, which was visited during the New York Legends CARavan.

An article on it starts on the next page.Without cheating by looking at the answers below, see how many you can identify.

Left to right across both pages, then top to bottom:1921 Holmes, 1921 Mitchell, 1927 Studebaker, 1933 Marmon, 1924 Lafayette, 1907 Franklin,

1924 Buick, 1912 White, 1939 Buick, 1929 Franklin, 1915 Franklin, 1930 Franklin,1938 Graham, 1937 Chrysler, 1937 Oldsmobile, 1933 Diamond T, 1928 Stutz, 1947 Playboy

1925 Stutz, 1908 Pullman, 1909 Victor.

Five of the cars are Full Classics. I’m sure you can pick them out.


Colorado region members attending the CARavan:Betsy and Lonnie Fallin, Kent and Shiela Koppenheffer, Maury Wilson and Tom Goyne

awaiting dinner and 60s music at the Grandview restaurant.

New York Legends CARavanBy Tom Goyne

Photos by Betsy Fallin and Tom Goyne

naTional Caravan

The first national CARavan this year was in New York in the historic Hudson River Valley region of the state known as Leatherstocking Country. The term Leath-

erstocking Country refers to the fictional character Natty Bumppo, featured by author James Fenimore Cooper in his collection of stories, Leatherstocking Tales, set in this re-gion. Leatherstocking is a term for the leather leggings often worn by Indians to protect their legs from brush and briers in the woods.

Susan and Skip Tetz with the help of Grace and Bob Gluck did the hard work of planning, orga-nizing and detailing the trip, and they did a good job indeed! We started at Saratoga Springs, which is about 190 miles north of New York City. It is a hub for thoroughbred horse racing, home to the Saratoga Race Course and the National Muse-um of Racing and Hall of Fame. We stayed at the Gideon Putnam Hotel which is located in the

Saratoga Spa State Park, famous for mineral baths. In the early 1900s it was a favorite destination for “Taking The Wa-ters.” Supposedly, drinking the mineral water and soaking in the many mineral baths was good for your health. That pur-pose has been supplanted for the most part, because today, Saratoga Springs is considered one of the State’s best cities to live in. We visited the local museums and car collections including the fabulous Jim Taylor collection and the superb Northeast Classic Car Museum. Jim walked us through

the building pointing out the many facets of his eclectic collec-tion, some of which are shown on pages 20 and 21.

We then moved on to the elegant Otesaga Ho-tel and resort in Cooper-stown for three nights to see some fine museums and collections, includ-ing the Baseball Hall of Fame. Your editor was very pleased to find his uncle’s photograph there. His name was Earl McNeely and he


The mighty Hudson River from the grounds of West Point.The Great Hudson River Chain and high ground above the narrow “S” curve in the river enabled the Continental Army

to prevent British Royal Navy ships from sailing upriver and thus dividing the Colonies. While the fortifications at West Point were known as Fort Arnold during the war, as commander, Benedict Arnold committed his act of treason, attempting to sell the fort to the British. After Arnold betrayed the patriot cause, the Army changed the name of the

fortifications at West Point to Fort Clinton


The column of this memorial statue at West Point is the largest piece of polished granite in the world. It is dedicated to the memory of “The Officers and Men of the Regular Army of the Unit-ed States who Fell in Battle in the War of Rebellion.” It is a poignant reminder of the horrors

of West Point cadet fighting West Point cadet and brother fighting brother.

played for the Washington Senators in 1924, hitting the win-ning home run in the World Series that year.

Our next destination was on great mountain roads through the Catskill Mountains to Bethel Woods. These roads were per-fect for our Classics and gave them a good workout. Bethel Woods is where the infamous Woodstock Festival was held in 1969. It is nothing like it used to be. Now there is a handsome mu-seum celebrating both the bad and good music of the era, and the naked writhing bodies who at-tended the festival. OK, so maybe your editor is not too sympathetic to the festival and what it stood for, but it was an interesting museum anyway and did try to sensibly explain what happened there in 1969, and why it should be remembered. I’m glad we went.

Later that evening we went to the Grandview Restaurant in Pough-keepsie for a evening of good 60s music and dancing.

Next was a visit to West Point Academy with an excellent tour of the grounds, and a stop at Springwood, Franklin Roosevelt’s lifelong home at Hyde Park. This is a National His-

toric Site, but I don’t think I have ever seen a more poorly maintained building in all of my visits to these sites. Paint was peeling, the balustrades were rotting to the point of col-lapse, and some of the wooden columns had gaping holes in them where animals had burrowed in. The Park Ranger told us that approval for restoration funding is oozing its way through Congress and the Park Service administration.

The interior of FDR’s home is typical of the era: crowded with pictures, paintings, furniture and trinkets. It looks well lived in. FDR was born here and used it for escape from DC, but also used it for confer-ences with Churchill and the like. It has a significant history and despite its appalling condition, it was a good visit.

That evening we dined at the Culinary institute of America, a prime training facility for future chefs and wait staff. The facil-ity is impressive with about 4,000 students. We had a choice of a French or an Italian restaurant for dinner, and both were excel-lent. It was the serv-er’s first night, how-ever, so they were pretty nervous. ■


Above and on the previous page is Jim Taylor’s fabulous collection...Eclectic is the way he describes it. Taylor invented the common boat fender used in every marina in the world.

Jim is with Skip Tetz, the tour organizer in the lower left photo, above.

The Classics on the CARavan are lined up in the rain at Spring-

wood, FDR’s home in Hyde Park.


The two shots above are of Jim Taylor in his 1941 Buick on the 2007 Peking-to-Paris race.Below are left, the West Point chapel and right, the Culinary Institute of America campus where we were

served an elegant meal.


Above are Art Cutler, Lonnie Fallin and Don Bradenat the ACC Concours

On Sunday June 9th, 2019 the Colorado Concours d’Elegance was held at Arapahoe Community Col-lege in Littleton. This event, which used to be a

charity event for cerebral palsy has changed to a charity event benefiting Ability Connection of Colorado.

The Concours is hosted by the members of more than 15 car clubs in Colorado. There were more than 400 cars dis-played. Every make from Aston Martin to Tesla were there, and also 4 handsome brass era cars from the early 1900’s.

This year three of our Classic Car Club of America mem-bers, Don Braden, Art Cutler and Lonnie Fallin displayed Full Classics at the show. Don’s Full Classic was a 1941 Cadillac 60 S Se-dan. Art’s was his 1931 Cadillac 12 cylinder 370A Coupe. Lonnie’s was a 1947 Packard Cus-tom Super Clipper Club Coupe. Two of our members also had cars entered but were non-Classics. Phil Doty entered his 1984 Porsche Cabriolet, and Steve

Kreisman entered his 1957 Jaguar Drop Head Coupe.

Last year Tom Goyne entered his 1934 Packard Super Eight Convertible Coupe and it was awarded Best of Show. Un-fortunately this year none of our cars were winners.

This is certainly a very good event for charity, and many, many very nice cars were displayed. A lot of people paid to attend this event and to stroll around looking at the various cars. Since our Full Classics and the brass-era cars were next to each other, I noticed that more people stopped and spent time looking at our cars and asking questions about them and took a lot of pictures, than the other makes. Our

cars do attract attention Art let a number of kids climb into the rumble seat on his car, and several people had their pictures taken in the driver’s seat of my Packard. The rea-son I point this out is that our club is missing out on a great opportunity to let people know about our cars and our club, and we certainly are not taking ad-vantage of it. ■

Ability Connection Colorado Concours d’Elegance

By Lonnie FallinPhotos from the Ability Connection Colorado web site

reGional ConCours


Here are a few cars at the show.Two nice brass cars were among the entries in the pre-war class.

Below that is Lonnie Fallin’s 1947 packard, a youngster in a Saab wishing he was sixteen, Don Braden’s 1941 Cadillac, and Art Cutler’s 1931 Cadillac.


The

Art Cutler, above, giving some kids a chance to experience his rumble seat at the ACC Concours. An anxious mom with camera at ready looks on.

Below, Art’s, magnificent flying lady.


Rebuilding an Autopulse Electric Fuel PumpBy Tom Goyne

I have used Autopulse Model 300 and 500 electric fuel pumps for many years on my Classics with good success.

These are the ones with metal (not rubber) bellows. They are reliable, foolproof and effectively eliminate the worry of vapor lock with modern gasoline. They have not been built for many years, but millions were produced at their plant in Detroit and they are generally available on eBay in rebuild-able condition for under $200. They were used as original equipment on many makes such as Wills St. Claire, Duesen-berg, some Cords and Porsches, quite a few English cars, and hot-rodders of the 50s loved them.

The principle of operation is thus: An electrical solenoid much like the solenoid operatng your starter pulls a metal bellows downward. The action of the bellows sucks gas-oline into it and at the same time opens a set of points dis-connecting the electrical supply from the solenoid. A spring was compressed during the downward motion of the bellows and this then returns the bellows to its original position forc-

ing the gasoline out of the bellows and to the carburetor, at the same time closing the points to start the process all over again. This cycle repeats a few times per second until pressure builds up to a level predetermined by the spring force. The pressure in the bellows then keeps the points open stopping the action.

The construction of the pump is rugged and simple. Unless damaged, the only thing that happens to it is that the cork gaskets dry out and leak, though even that won’t happen if it is kept full of gasoline and used periodically. I have had one on my 1934 Packard for some 60 years without any re-building required.

Classic & Exotic Service, Inc [www.classicandexotic.com or (248) 269-9414] offers a rebuilding service for the pumps which is thorough and effective. If, however, you want to try your hand at rebuilding the pump yourself, here are instruc-tions on how to do it. Classic & Exotic Service also sells gasket sets and a few other parts.

Rebuilding instructions follow on page 28. A general note on rebuilding...take lots of pictures; it helps in reassembly.

TeCh Tips

This is an Autopulse Model 300 electric fuel pump installed on the outside of

the side frame rail of my 1934 Packard. Note the angle bracket I made to secure it in place. The pump should be mounted

low on the chassis below the level of the gas tank and well away from the ex-haust pipe, with the black cover down-

ward. The inlet side is shown.

I cut the main gasoline line and bent it out away from the frame rail and

installed it with a compression fitting directly onto the pump outlet (not shown). A short length of rubber

fuel-grade hose was used to connect to the inlet (shown).


First step is disassembly. Take the black pressed steel cover off by removing the two screws holding it in place and slide it off. It is not necessary to remove the electrical terminal. Inspect the electric solenoid for damaged or

overheated wires, and check the bellows for cracks. Problems in either one of these areas means you should

probably not attempt the rebuild yourself, but rather con-tact Classic & Exotic, or find another pump.

Next remove the screw holding the domed filter cover in place on the top of the unit and take it off. Then remove the two screws holding the top die casting in place and pull it off. You may need to tap it lightly with a hammer

to release the cork gasket. (The top is the part at the left above.) Before removing the top, however, mark the orientation of it on the main base with a couple of punch pricks to insure proper reassembly.. Under the top are the two valves, inlet and outlet. Clean everything carefully using alcohol and lacquer thinner, but be very careful

to not get either on the electrical windings! You will be reusing the valves so be especially careful of them.

Then remove the four screws holding the main die cast base and electrical solenoid frame together. You may

need an angle screwdriver to get to them as shown above. Be very careful that you don’t damage the bellows in this step. Once removed, check the bellows again for cracks.

At this time, you can also check the points to see that they open and close smoothly, and you can clean them.

Here are all the parts cleaned-up and laid out, includ-ing a gasket set from Classic & Exotic Services on the

left. Cleaning the old gaskets off of the cast surfaces is tedious, but to insure good sealing with the new gaskets,

do this carefully.

Reassembly is the reverse of disassembly. Note above the correct location and orientation of the

inlet valve on the left. The outlet valve is not yet in place but the cork gasket is shown under it. The outlet valve is

installed upside-down from the inlet. The inlet end of the casting is marked “I” and outlet “O”.

Photos below show correct gasket placement.

Make sure that all gasket sealing surfaces are clean and scratch-free, and assemble dry without gasket cement. Torque the screws tight enough to compress the cork,

but don’t over-tighten as you can bend the die castings fairly easily. When first running the pump you will find

that it takes a while to prime. If you start the car first, its mechanical pump will speed up the priming process.


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P. O. Box 37, Monkton, MD 21111(410) 472-9043

A club for the early Lincolns1920 through 1939

LincolnOwnersClub.com

Blast-Tech, IncSpecialists in Automotive Paint Removal

In-house blasting of Steel, Aluminum, Fiberglass, Glass, Wood, etc

Using various types of Sand, Soda, Plastic media, Glass beads

Gary Nardi(303) 806-9992Fax (303) 806 9985

3775 South Kalamath StreetEnglewood, CO 80110


This photo was taken in DenverThe occupant of the vehicle is probably apparent to you,

but the identity of the car may not be.Identify the occupant, the make and year of the car, who owned it,

and where the photo was taken.

mysTery phoTo

At West Point Academy on the New York Legends CARavan was this monumentdedicated to the memory of “The Officers and Men of the Regular Army of the United States

who Fell in Battle in the War of Rebellion.” An article on the CARavan begins on page 18.

z | t · and errett lobban cord, his empire his motorcars by grif-fith borgeson. these two books...

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