Car of the Week: 1932 Auburn B-100A Brougham

In June 1977, an excited 6-year-old John Pontius left Auburn, Ind., with his father, Lee, and family friend, John Stoops, on a once-in-a-lifetime road trip to Buffalo, N.Y., to pick up a 1932 Auburn 8-100A that Lee had recently purchased. John recalls stopping along the interstate at what seemed like every 10 minutes for rest room breaks. The excitement of picking up an Auburn automobile and transporting it back to where it was built was too much for the 6 year old.

Once the trio arrived in Buffalo, they made their way to the downtown industrial district and parked outside an old factory-style building. They were greeted by the seller who escorted them into the corner of a building where a mostly original and complete 1932 Auburn Brougham two-door sedan was tucked away. John recalls how creepy it felt walking into the large building and seeing the car sitting there all by itself. As a child, he says he felt a little fearful at first, but after seeing the excitement on his father’s face, his fears disappeared.

Six years later, at age 12, John learned how to drive a manual transmission in the Auburn Brougham. He recalls wearing an oval-shaped tire path into the pavement of the NAPA store his family owns as he put the ’32 Auburn’s clutch and three-speed transmission through the paces.

In 1989, during his senior year of high school, John received a phone call from his father. His parents had divorced, and John was staying at his mother’s house when his father asked, “Hey, do you mind if I sell this Auburn?”

John was preoccupied and really didn’t give it much thought. His father had been letting him drive his 1963 Studebaker Avanti that he purchased new in December 1963. With its cool futuristic looks, the Avanti contributed to some of John’s loss of interest in the Auburn, so he answered his father, “No, I don’t really care if you sell it.” Not long after, a local business owner by the name of Dave “Greenie” Greenfield bought the ’32 Auburn. At that time, John says he didn’t yet feel the effects of separation anxiety.

After the Auburn sold, John says he didn’t give the car much thought until he grew older. One day, in 2017, nearly 40 years after it had been sold, something changed and John started thinking about the ’32 Auburn. He’d occasionally seen Greenie driving it around town over the years, but now something told him to get it back. The car held many great memories of he and his father hanging out and driving it down Main Street in Auburn. He began to think to himself, “I wonder if it’s still in Auburn, and if so, would the owner sell it?”

“In May 2017, nearly 40 years later, I approached the owner of the car, Dave Greenfield, or “Greenie,” as he goes by,” John recalled. “Greenie owned the local liquor store, The House of Spirits. He was getting ready to retire and was selling his business. The Friday before Memorial Day 2017, I went to his store to purchase beverages for the long holiday weekend.

“‘Hey Greenie, you have a minute to talk?’,” John says he asked him. “He grumpily replied, ‘Whatever you need to say, you can say right here.’

“OK, what do I have to lose at this point?” John asked himself. “‘Um, I see you’re selling your business. If you ever consider selling your ’32 Auburn, I wouldn’t mind having a shot at it.’”

Greenie politely gave John the “brush off,” stating he would keep it in mind. John gathered his items and didn’t expect to hear from him again.

“As I left that day, I am sure he and I both thought it would be years before he parted with the Auburn,” John said. “It must have been related to the extra day off or additional hours from the long weekend, because Greenie showed up at my business and was in my office the next Tuesday after Memorial Day weekend, stating that, after thinking it over, he was ready to sell me that Auburn.”

John says he wasn’t prepared for something to happen that fast.

“I hurried up and called my wife, Lorrie, to make sure I didn’t have to get divorce papers if I bought another car, as she had told me a few cars before,” John jokes. “Greenie and I worked out a deal and I had the ’32 Auburn in my procession a few days later.”

In the early ’90s, Greenie had the Auburn professionally restored by a local shop in Auburn. John said Greenie took very good care of it after the restoration and when he took ownership of the Auburn, it still retained its beautiful red paint finish and mechanically ran like a finely tuned watch.

“The car first appeared in our family in 1977 and reappeared in 2017,” John recalls. “The second time around was like a renewed friendship. I never knew I missed it until I got it back.”

John and Lorrie’s children, Jack and Kennedy, are now college students and members of the NATMUS youth volunteer mentoring program. They are into cars much like their parents and grandparents. In fact, they teamed up with Connor Miller, also a NATMUS youth mentoring program member, to win the 2023 Great Race in the X-Cup class under the NATMUS and Early Ford Museum sponsorship driving a 1948 Ford they specially prepared.

Today, Jack regularly drives the ’32 Auburn around town much like his father and grandfather did back in the late ’70s and ’80s. Now that three generations of the family have enjoyed it, John refers to their 1932 Auburn Brougham as “The Pontius Family Heirloom.”

The 1932 Auburn

The story of the 1932 Auburn essentially starts and ends with Errett Lobban Cord. Although the Auburn Automobile Co. was established by brothers Frank and Morris Eckhart in 1900, it didn’t began seriously offering cars until 1904. Production remained modest and it wasn’t until 1909 that automobile production crossed the 1,000-car mark. In 1919, production crossed the 6,000-car mark, and that was the year the Eckharts sold out to a group of Chicago businessmen. The businessmen soon realized how poor the automobile business had been for the Eckharts and by 1924 sought a savior in Cord, who had been incredibly successful in selling Moon automobiles. Cord agreed to become the general manager of Auburn in 1924; part of his employment agreement was that, if he could save Auburn, he’d have the option of acquiring control of the car company. Cord dolled up the unsold Auburns with two-tone paint jobs, and in 1925 added the availability of a Lycoming eight-cylinder to the existing six-cylinder chassis. In 1926, he had a streamer beltline treatment added that began atop the hood, behind a Duesenberg-like grille shell. Auburns were now flashy cars that people wanted to buy. The year of the streamered Auburns was also the year that Cord became president of the now-profitable Auburn Automobile Co.

Cord continued the formula of building stylish, attractive cars with available six- or eight-cylinder power in the mid-price field through the rest of the 1920s, and in 1931 brought to market a new Auburn styled by talented designer Alan H. Leamy. The streamer line remained, but the cars now had more greatly sweeping fenders and a handsome new painted grille on new bodies that were more graceful in curve. Only an eight-cylinder was available.

The restyled 1931 Auburns were new and beautiful enough that the company was able to buck the trend of greatly declining sales due to the Great Depression, and the Auburn Automobile Co. reported a profit of more than $ 3.5 million, a figure three times that of the previous year. Auburn sold 32,301 cars in 1931, making it the company’s best-ever year for sales and moving the mid-price car maker from 22nd place in the industry to 13th.

As with every other automobile manufacturer, 1932 was a devastating year for sales. The Great Depression had taken a hold on all industry, and new-car sales plummeted for the year. Auburn production for 1932 was about a third of what it had been for the previous model year, and only 11,347 new Auburns were sold. This was surely a shock to E.L. Cord and the rest of Auburn Automobile Co. management since the cars were essentially unchanged in appearance, and now a V-12 engine was available—a stunning announcement in the mid-price car field.

For 1932, Auburn offered its eight-cylinder 8-100 Standard and upgraded 8-100A Custom lines, most on a 127-inch wheelbase (the seven-passenger eight-cylinder Auburn rode a 136-inch wheelbase), and the new twelve-cylinder 12-160 Standard and 12-160A Custom lines on a 133-inch wheelbase. Prices for the base 1932 Auburn 8-100 started the year at $ 845 for the Standard business coupe and topped out at $ 1,095 for the Phaeton Sedan (convertible sedan) or Speedster; the corresponding models in the 8-110A Custom series were priced $ 1,045 for the business coupe and $ 1,295 for the Phaeton Sedan or Speedster.

The Great Depression had such a devastating effect that by midyear, prices at Auburn were slashed by as much as hundreds of dollars per model. For example, the 8-100 business coupe went from $ 845 to $ 675 at midyear and the 8-100A Custom Speedster and Phaeton Sedan went from $ 1,295 to $ 975. The twelve-cylinder engine added about $ 500 to each respective Auburn model, so when prices were slashed at midyear, an Auburn 12-160 Standard business coupe went from $ 1,345 to $ 975—an incredibly low price for a twelve-cylinder motor car.

Auburns were little changed for 1933, but the slide continued with fewer than half as many sold in 1933 as compared to 1932. An all-new Auburn was introduced for 1934, which was restyled for 1935 and 1936, but it wasn’t enough to save Auburn from the fate befell by so many car makers during the Great Depression, and by 1937, E.L. Cord’s Auburn Automobile Co. permanently ceased building passenger cars

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