More Cord L-29 LaGrande boattail speedsters exist today than Cord ever built. This is easily proven, because Cord built just one such speedster, while two replicas have since been built by enthusiasts of E.L. Cord’s pioneering front-wheel-drive cars. One of those replicas, itself painstakingly researched and crafted, will head to auction next month at Bonhams’ inaugural Scottsdale event.
Built in 1931 as a show car to promote the L-29 – sales of which had suffered from the 1929 stock market crash – the L-29 LaGrande boattail speedster was based on a design by Phil Wright and crafted at Union City Body Company, which at that point served as E.L. Cord’s in-house coachbuilder under the name LaGrande. It’s known that the boattail speedster debuted at that year’s New York auto show, but Cord historians have debated what happened to it since then. As Arnie Addison, who commissioned this replica, told us for a story on the car in the December 2004 issue of Hemmings Classic Car, actress Jean Harlow and her husband, film producer Paul Bern, bought the original speedster from Cord, shipped it to France where it won the 1931 Paris Concours d’Elegance, shipped it back across the Atlantic for a stop at the 1931 Toronto auto show and for refurbishing at the factory in Auburn, Indiana, then shipped it once more to Europe, where it disappeared sometime around 1939 and is believed to have been scrapped during World War II.
One other replica of the L-29 LaGrande boattail speedster was built in the early 1990s (and graced the cover of the March 2005 issue of Hemmings Classic Car), but Addison made several departures from that replica – including the royal cranberry and beige paint scheme – which he said were based on the years of research done on the car. For the actual construction of the car, he handed a spare L-29 frame and a boattail section crafted by Don Fretwell to the three Tyree brothers at Tyree Auto Restoration, who then built the body out of aluminum and the pontoon fenders out of steel and added such touches as a convertible top that stows behind the seat, a Duesenberg chronometer and altimeter, and a humidor and bar built into the doors. The engine remains a stock 125hp, 298.6-cu.in. Lycoming L-head straight-eight, and the chassis is all stock Cord L-29.
Addison finished his replica in 2004, and three years later, sold it to Texas collector John O’Quinn. While Addison claimed he spent more than $1 million building the car, Bonhams has given it a pre-auction estimate of $200,000 to $300,000. Bonhams’ Scottsdale auction will take place January 19 at the Westin Kierland Resort and Spa. For more information, visit Bonhams.com.
UPDATE (10.May 2012): Little late with this, but we recently got the sale price of the Cord: $290,800.