 An old buddy told me yesterday that he's down to his last few items on the the "to-do" list for his restoration. Thought I should pass along the story for those of us who are having problems -- tearing out of hair, cussing, etc. while rebuilding our old JD's -- think of this project -as things could be worse! Here's the short story version: What you see is a 1937 Cord model 812, about 95% done, last summer. The restoration started a few years ago. The car had been hacked / converted from its original fwd drive train to a 50's vintage Rocket V8 Olds with mating transmission and rear drive in the 60's. The frame cross members had been hacked out for the conversion, and it was a mess. Restoring it involved making and installing new frame cross members, building a whole new floor -- and rebuilding the old Lycoming supercharged V-8 and electrically shifted front transaxle. Yup, you gotta read a schematic to figure out how to make the gears shift. As for parts - forget it. Make your own. The car was made about 40 miles southeast of here in Connersville, Indiana. They only made about 3,000 of them in total, and only 300-400 or so of the pop top version like this one. It has the flex header pipes coming out of the hood like its cousin the Dusenberg, the lowest ride height of any US car of the time, no running boards, internal door hinges, a rear hinged front opening hood, and the headlights pop up when you turn a cable driven crank -- all firsts for a US car, and stuff that that wouldn't show up in other cars 'til years later. And it was the first front wheel drive car made in the USA (forget about those '66 Olds Tornados, they were 30 years late). Us guys who have a historical or family connection to Indiana made cars like Doosie's, Auburns, Stutz's, Studebakers, and so on think this Cord is worth at least a left arm, maybe a leg as well. My guess is that a JD restoration never involved as much torching, welding, rebuilding or one-off manufacturing as this one did. So cheer up and think of this project next time the old JD gets the best of you. Steve
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