E. L. Cord

E. L. Cord is remembered for some of the most beautiful automobiles ever built in America, but for a few years in the early 1930s he was also one of the most powerful men in American aviation. Errett Lobban Cord was born on July 20, 1894, in Warrensburg, Missouri. His family moved to Los Angeles when he was about ten, and he left Los Angeles Polytechnic High School at fifteen. By 1913 he was rebuilding old Ford Model Ts and selling them at a profit. He hauled ore in Arizona, sold Paige cars in Phoenix and ran a one-bus stage line before moving to Chicago in 1920, where selling Moon automobiles earned him savings of about $100,000.

In 1924 the owners of the failing Auburn Automobile Company of Auburn, Indiana, turned the company over to him. He had its unsold cars repainted and sold them, took part of his pay in stock options, and within two years was Auburn's president and controlling owner. He bought the Duesenberg company in 1926, bought Lycoming of Williamsport, Pennsylvania, in 1927, and in 1929 introduced the front-drive Cord L-29. The Duesenberg Model J and the later Cord 810 and 812 followed. In 1929 he organized the Cord Corporation as a holding company, and that September he acquired 60 percent of the Stinson Aircraft Corporation of Wayne, Michigan. The same year Lycoming built its first aircraft engine, the R-680 radial.

Cord founded two airlines in 1931, Century Air Lines in Chicago and Century Pacific Lines in California. When he cut Century's pilot pay by about 40 percent early in 1932, its pilots struck in one of the first strikes in airline history. In April 1932 he sold Century to the Aviation Corporation, parent of American Airways, for Aviation Corporation stock, kept buying shares, and within a year controlled the company. After the government canceled the air mail contracts in February 1934, American Airways reorganized as American Airlines and came out of the new contracts with its routes intact.

Cord spent 1934 to 1936 in England, reportedly because of kidnapping threats. After his return the Securities and Exchange Commission investigated his trading in Checker Cab stock, and he agreed to a consent decree. In August 1937 he sold his Cord Corporation holdings to a group led by Victor Emanuel for about $2.6 million, and the Auburn, Cord and Duesenberg cars went out of production.

He moved to Nevada in the 1940s, ranched near Lovelock and elsewhere, and in the 1950s founded KCRL radio and television in Reno. He served in the Nevada State Senate from Esmeralda County from February 1956 to June 1958 and declined to run for governor in 1958. He died of cancer in Reno on January 2, 1974, and is buried at Inglewood Park Cemetery in Inglewood, California.

Our 1931 Stinson Junior S was built at the Wayne factory while it belonged to Cord's company, and the Junior S was built with the 215-horsepower Lycoming R-680 radial, the same engine type as the Lycoming R-680 on display in our hangars.