The Auburn brand was becomong a victem of the 1930s Great Depression. Management (quite likely including company owner E.L. Cord) probably decided that a new ultra-sporty model might help Auburn's reputation and draw buyers of its other models to dealer showrooms. The problem was that the budget for this project was small.
Fortunately, Cord Corporation employed a gifted designer -- Gordon Buehrig -- who succeeded in the creation of a classic design.
Buehrig, in his book "Rolling Sculpture," stated on pages 69 and 71:
"Auburn had built speedsters in the past. The last had been in 1933, an Al Leamy design. The bodies of those were built by the Union City Body Company of Union City, Indiana. [Harold T.] Ames knew that the body company had about a hundred of these bodies left over which had never been scrapped. His idea was to adapt a few of these to the 1935 Auburn chassis and display them at Auto Shows. He asked me to see what I could do."
The 1933 body was narrower than the new 1935 frame allowed, so ajustments had to be made.
"By using my group on a heavy overtime schedule, we did the entire design job in two weeks. We had the body cut in half just to the rear of the top well cover and threw away the rear portion. We built a wooden armature to hold the clay on the tail section and sculpted the new area in full size. We also sculpted the front and rear fenders on the mockup, setting it all on a 1935 chassis. The new hood to match up the 1935 radiator shell and the 1933 cowl was added. The outside exhaust pipes completed the picture."
I believe that constraints usually lead to better design solutions than "blue sky" unconstrained environments. So it was for the mid-1930s Auburn Speedster.
Photos of the supercharged 1935 Auburn 851 Speedster below are via Bring a Trailer Auctions. Enjoy!!
It was done in two weeks, using lead pencils, no calculators and no computers.
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