This car was owned by a man who cared for it and maintained it himself for over thirty years before selling it to buy a more modern car to keep up with the changing demands of highway driving. Some twenty-five years ago it was restored to new condition and has been in the Bayberry collection here for the past twenty years. It won its CCCA Premier senior 1st place award in the early 1980s and has been maintained by our full time staff since arriving at Bayberry.

Cord shared its breeding ground with such distinguished counterparts as Duesenberg and Auburn and was a beautiful and innovative vehicle with very sporty characteristics. It was the first with retractable headlamps and front wheel drive and was fitted with a 4.7 liter supercharged Lycoming V-8 engine with the optional Schwitzer-Cummins supercharger, at an additional cost of $450. Total production of the 810/812 Cords was a mere 3,000 with the Phaetons production limited to only 196 units built. While many of today’s carmakers hold innovation as their trademark, no one car company in its era held to a higher innovative standard than did Cord. With front wheel drive, a pre-selector semi-automatic transmission and supercharged engine, one would think you were talking about a new car but these features were present in the Cord many years ahead of its time.