“Dear Mr. Cord – wrote Samuel Plant from Missouri, in a fawning letter to Errett Lobban Cord on November 1, 1930 – After driving automobiles twenty-five years let me repeat and to you personally what I have said to others: that I thank God daily that He let me live until you developed the Front Drive car.”
This unknown fan of Front Drive was, perhaps, unaware that he was addressing a man whose motto was “Be different. Not spectacular or contrary, but different”. And in an automotive world where rear wheel drive was the norm, demonstrating the superiority and excellence of front wheel drive certainly counted as being different. If truth be told, there had been a previous attempt to do this in 1905, when John Walter Christie (1865-1944) presented a race car with a transversely-mounted engine and clutch-transmission assembly mounted directly on the crankshaft. This layout anticipated what Alec Issigonis would do fifty-four years later with the Mini, but was not developed any further. Only Harry Miller, a designer and constructor from Los Angeles whose cars and engines – powering cars built by others – featured ubiquitously in the American racing scene, accomplished any sporting result worthy of worldwide note with front wheel drive, when in 1925, his two litre Junior 8 finished second at the Indianapolis 500, behind a Duesenberg driven by Peter de Paolo.
This made many forward-looking carmakers of the era to start taking the idea seriously. One of these was Auburn (of which Cord was Vice President), which in early 1927 launched an experimental programme drawing from the experience acquired by Harry Miller: Auburn offered him $60,000, to be paid in instalments of $1000 per month for five years, plus a royalty on each FWD (front-wheel-drive) car sold. For Auburn, choosing the front wheel drive solution, with the advantage of the expertise of the man of the day and his team, meant securing a leading place in what had now become a fiercely disputed technological race.
But Miller’s cars were anything but faultless. One of the biggest problems that needed to be solved was the fact that the gearbox was unusable at full throttle – a significant flaw for a car destined for road use. But Cord still had a few aces up its sleeve, and played them cleverly. It had two brilliant minds from ‘its’ Duesenberg brand that it could put to work on the issue: Cornelius W. van Ranst, an excellent driver and superb engineer, and Tommy Milton, an excellent engineer and a superb driver. They solved the transmission problem, borrowing solutions used on the Detroit Special – a front wheel drive car created for Indianapolis.
But Van Ranst and Milton were by no means alone in exploring this route. Packard, for example, bought one of Miller’s prototypes and also secured his services as a consultant, offering him $5000 per year. And General Motors was just as keen to get in on the act, buying not one but three of the twelve front drive prototypes built by Miller. The entire motor industry was abuzz. The slogan “pull, don’t push” sent the industry into turmoil, and the race to be the first to offer the market an effective, attractive solution became more heated by the day. On June 29, 1929, the magazine Automotive Industries wrote: “The announcement of the imminent presentation (of the L-29) confirms the rumours that have shocked the entire industrial world, according to which Auburn is about to launch a range of front wheel drive touring cars, designed using Miller patents and, thus, coming first in the race to offer the principle of front drive to the public at large”.
The experimental prototype of the car underwent its first tests in November 1927. Cord himself took part in these tests – conducted around the Santa Monica Mountains – together with Miller, Duray and van Ranst. But in reality, the results of these initial tests were disastrous. The engine was noisy, the chassis was too flexible, the whole car shook unacceptably when steering and, most importantly, the Rzeppa universal joints of the transmission appeared to be too fragile for a car destined for an exacting clientele. But Cord played the importance of these shortcomings down, and despite the recommendations of van Ranst and Miller – who insisted on a more thorough shakedown of the car – Cord decided to schedule the presentation of the new car for August 1929. For him, coming first was just too important. And so the big moment finally arrived. On September 8, the New York Times reported that the new “FWD” had been formally presented to the nation the week before. The L-29 had secured its place in history as the first front wheel drive car offered on sale to the public. Errett Lobban Cord had won.
The range was made up of four models: a sedan, a Brougham chauffeured coupé, a torpedo and a cabriolet. Priced between $3095 and $3295, the Cords cost much less than models with comparable engine sizes offered by Packard, Cadillac or Stutz.
The design of the new Cord was the opposite of the ‘utilitarian’ look typical of American cars until the arrival of the Duesenberg J, Cord’s first great creation, and which had – to some extent – trivialised, if not actually negated the sense of wonder and of the new still elicited by the automobile. Errett Loban had succeeded in re-establishing this spirit in full in his cars. The Cord owed much of its allure to the harmony of its proportions. The low chassis and the sleek lines of the bonnet – measuring almost half as long as the entire car – lent a sense of predatory prestige to a design which suddenly left all other designers of the era at a loss. A crucial contribution to the design of the new car came from Alan Huet Leamy, born in Arlington, Maryland, in 1902. A car enthusiast ever since he was a boy, Leamy started working for Marmon in 1927, but was immediately disappointed by the company’s paucity of imagination and creativity. His inspiration came from grand masters such as Labourdette, who designed for Hispano Suiza, and Castagna, for Isotta Fraschini.
As soon as he heard of the accord between Cord and Miller, and fascinated by the beauty of Duesenberg – of which Cord was president – he decided to contact Cord directly to offer his services as a designer. The astonishing thing was that Cord – or, rather, Van Ranst – wrote back to him, and he was hired. In August 1928, Al Leamy was in charge of the project to design the body of the future L-29. He started from the instruction – set as indispensable condition by Cord himself – to emphasise rather than conceal the basic principle defining the personality of the new car: front wheel drive. The design created from this initial premise was soft, voluptuous, almost feminine and at least ten years ahead of its time. The rest of the automobile industry found itself in a position of having to catch up with the new style ushered in the Cord. The car was warmly received by the public, and its style instantly attracted a clientele hungry for originality. The iconic architect Frank Lloyd Wright was one of the car’s most enthusiastic admirers, keeping his L-29, one of the first to be built, until his death in 1959. The greatest American coachbuilders – LeBaron, Rollston and Murphy – tried to outdo one another with elegant one-offs based on the L-29. One of these, by Murphy, was created for the sultry actress Dolores Del Rio, while another, also by Murphy, was built for John Barrymore. The fame of this car, created to be one of the most elegant in the world, soon reached the other side of the Atlantic. Castagna in Milan, and Franay and Saoutchik in Paris declared that they were willing to create their own variants of the L-29, while Proux went a step further, presenting a pearl grey coupé at the 1930 Paris Motor Show, which quickly became the star attraction of its stand.
For the car’s European debut – one of the most flamboyant in a history destined to be cut short by the Depression – the L-29 was presented by Léon Duray, who had been sent to drive in the Monza Grand Prix scheduled for September 15. In reality, however, the race driver had arrived in France much earlier, at the beginning of August, and spent the last part of the month setting new international records at the Monthléry circuit with his two Millers. Cord had given him an L-29 to drive around in during his stay in Europe, which gave the new car an enormous amount of free publicity. The car officially debuted in the continent at the Paris Motor Show, held from October 3 to 13, and at the London show, held from the 17th to the 26th that same month. The press of the day reported that 18 Cords were sold during the first three days of the Paris show, and that the Cord agent in London was a certain professional record-breaker going by the name of Malcolm Campbell.
But the black cloud of the Great Depression also cast its shadow over the brilliant L-29 – and the car’s great critical acclaim was not reflected in its sales. Between August 1929 and when the car went out of production, 5010 Cords were built: 799 of which in 1929, 1879 in 1930, 1416 in 1931 and 335 in its final year. Over the same period, Packard received 55,000 orders and Cadillac 35,000. According to Errett Lobban, the car should have “sold itself” to anyone who could afford it. But the reality was that while people are fascinated by the new at first, they get cold feet when it comes to actually buying it. With all motor racing cancelled during this period, there was no way to showcase the car’s greatest strength – its superb handling – and even an improvement in performance did nothing to boost sales. In 1933, the meteoric L-29 left the stage forever.
