Form, Function and Technology Wasted On The Wealthy... [PIC]

   After the stock market crash of 1929, the middle class shrunk dramatically and the poor just got poorer. Cars like this 1930 Cord L-29 Speedster bodied by industrial designer Clifford Brooks Stevens of Allenton, Wisconsin were way beyond the average consumers finances.  Designed by E.L. Cord. the L-29 featured the first American front wheel drive chassis powered by a 125 HP Lycoming straight 8 mounted behind the transaxle. Its low slung chassis allowed for some of America's most beautiful, state-of- the-art automobiles. The problem was who could afford them? Only somewhere between 4400 and 5000 chassis were sold and Cord went belly up the following year. The brand was resurrected again in 1936 with a new chassis, but folded a few years later for good. The technologic advances in cars builders like Cord, Auburn, Duesenberg and Packard just couldn't be utilized by the Big Three because for them to stay alive, they'd have to sell hundreds of thousands of cars at affordable prices and technology and innovation was just too costly for the mass market. So imagine if the depression never happened and the competition amongst the Big Three loaded with R&D capital could have kept moving forward where we'd have been by the end of the 1930s. This L-79 offers such a beautiful design cues with its mid-mounted vertical stabilizer and turned metal aircraft inspired dash that Stevens loved to integrate into his bodywork.