The styling of the Cord 810 was the work of designer
Gordon M. Buehrig and his team of stylists, which included young
Vince Gardner and
Alex Tremulis. While the first American front-wheel-drive car with independent front suspension, it had an archaic tube rear axle with semi-elliptic rear springs. Power came from a The semi-automatic (shared with several 812 body styles), and in 1936 came in four models: the entry-level sedan at US$1995, the Beverly sedan ($2095), Sportsman ($2145), and Phaeton ($2195). The 1937 812s had the same models, priced $2445, $2545, $2585, and $2645, plus two more, on a wheelbase, the $2960 Custom Beverly and $3060 Custom
Berline called the Westchester. Reportedly conceived as a
Duesenberg and nearly devoid of chrome, the 810 had hidden door hinges The most famous feature was the "coffin nose" that gave the vehicle its nickname; it featured a horizontally
louvered wraparound grille, The first production cars were not ready to deliver until February, and did not reach New York City until April 1936. In all, Cord managed to sell only 1,174 of the new 810 in its first
model year, as the result of mechanical troubles. Supercharged 1936 models were called 810S and 1937 models were called 812S. Supercharged models were distinguished from the normally aspirated models by the brilliant chrome-plated external exhaust pipes mounted on each side of the hood and grill. With supercharging, horsepower was raised to 170. Early reliability problems, including slipping out of gear and
vapor lock, cooled initial enthusiasm. Although most new owners loved their sleek fast cars, the dealer base shrank rapidly. Unsold left-over and in-process 1936 810 models were re-numbered and sold as 1937 812 models. Total 810/812 production was 2,972 cars, including 205 convertible cabriolets, including the one-off prototype 1938 Custom Cabriolet, before the production ended in 1937. Cord had planned some mechanical updates and cosmetic changes to the 1938 model, probably named 814. The production ended before the 1938 model could be launched. A single 814 prototype was built and kept in the storage for many years until it was discovered in 1989. The current owner was unaware of its provenance when he purchased it, and he used the factory archival photos and drawings to confirm it was a 814 prototype. Aside from the small production of SAMCO Cord 8/10 (1964 to 1966), Cord 810/812 was the last American front-wheel-drive cars for almost thirty years until the debut of the
Oldsmobile Toronado in 1966, followed by a heavily redesigned
Cadillac Eldorado in 1967. Both these
GM divisional
halo cars paid homage to 810/812 hidden headlamps. The
second-generation Toronado introduced a hood design that resembled the 810/812 coffin nose and horizontal cooling grille. The longitudinal layout of placing the transmission in front of axle and the engine behind the axle was never used again in the American front-wheel-drive vehicles to this day. The most common arrangement is transverse mount and, the less common is longitudinal mount with engine ahead of axle and transmission behind (a.k.a.
Eagle Premier and
Chrysler LH, for instance). British author
James Leasor owned two Cords, an 810 and an 812. One of the characters in his novels,
Jason Love, owns one, a roadster. All of his novels that features Jason Love includes Cord. The 1965 movie
Where the Spies Are had Love promised an ultra-rare Cord LeBaron in return for agreeing to carry out a mission for
MI-6. In the 1938 film "
Gangster's Boy" starring Jackie Cooper, the main character drives a white 1937 Cord 812SC Sportman. ==Hupmobile/Graham==