How Front-Wheel-Drive Looked in 1930
Filed in archive American Independents by Philip Powell on August 08, 2007

Sports Car Market magazine's editors were free to attend the 2007 Meadowbrook Concours and graced us with a photo gallery of the cars on display. And what a concours it was, with, as SCM duly notes, "a tour, fashion show, and Hangar
party, along with the traditional RM Auction and the Sunday concours." I won't bore you with aircraft details, having already done so with blogs from our local open house, and SCM hasn't included photo captions. But here's one I recognise and I can assure you it's an L-29 Cord convertible sedan, circa 1930.This luxury car has a significant place in automotive history, not as the first front-wheel-drive auto, which it wasn't, but as the first application of FWD to a modern production automobile, beating the Ruxton by a few months. Front-wheel-drive made for a lower silhouette and many connoisseurs consider this the best looking car of its period. The L-29's inline 8-cylinder engine produced 125 hp initially but was later bored out to deliver 132 hp. The depression unfortunately cut the L-29's lifespan to just three years but the Cord was revived in 1936 with designer Gordon Buehrig's magnificent 810.
Permalink: How Front-Wheel-Drive Looked in 1930
Tags:
Cord L29 Meadowbrook concours classic vintage antique antiques collector old car cars auto automobil
Trackback: http://www.creative-weblogging.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.pl/85227




