Christmas lights are coming to our park! The folks on G street have gone overboard on lighting and decorating. Lots of lights on cactus plants! Here’s a sampling of what people do to their park models:

Here’s a guy with a motorhome, who outdoes them all! He’s got a tunnel of light, with the Polar Express roaring out towards you. Then a smaller railroad that runs around a smaller dome of lights. The owner is very nice… when asked, he said he stores all this stuff at his son’s place nearby.

The Villagaires is (are?) a singing group here in the park, and they put on a nice concert last weekend. They really are good, and we had a fun time. They even led us in singing some Christmas Carols.

One of the things we like about this park is all the hobbies and activities that are available. One I have really enjoyed is woodcarving. Here’s a little pirate I just did. This shows him before, during and after painting.

Below are a couple of “Icicles” and some pictures of the progress. I don’t have final pictures, so you’ll have to imagine what they look like stained and hanging on a tree.

Lots of folks in campgrounds have a little sign that says who they are and where they’re from. I’ve thought about it for years (for four years, actually) and finally made one. It proudly says we are nomads, formerly of Denver, Colorado. It is just hooked where the front license would be if we had one, (Florida doesn’t require a front plate) and will pop off to prepare for driving.

Still volunteering at the Tucson Auto Museum, so you still get to see featured cars. Last week I showed the magnificent 1937 Packard that was purchased when new by Jack Benny. One of the most elegant cars of the period. But now I’m going to present the 1937 Cord 812. You can appreciate how totally radical this car was for the time by comparing to the ’37 Packard.

The Cord was introduced in 1936. The famous designer Gordon Buehrig wanted to get rid of the vertical grilles present in almost every other car in the world. The Cord had front wheel drive, with the transmission in front of the engine. This got rid of a long drive shaft running under the length of the car, and let the seating areas be lower. To aid the super low look, running boards were omitted, another startling design feature. The transmission was pretty unique also – a Wilson Preselect. With a preselect, you had a tiny gate for a 4 speed transmission on a stalk extending from the steering column. You would move this miniature lever to the next gear you were planning on using, and when you wanted to shift, you pressed the pedal where you’d expect the clutch to be. The transmission would then shift to the preselected gear. There are a couple of other vehicles that used this type of gearbox, but they tended to have problems. Fully automatic transmissions were not far down the line, so the preselect never got widely used. I think this was an ideal usage for one, as getting a normal shift linkage from the driving compartment to a transmission in front of the engine would have been incredibly difficult.

The Cord also had hidden headlights. One story has it that E. L. Cord, (who owned the company,) had promised that his new car would make 100 miles per hour. When testing a prototype, they could not get it reliably over about 98. In an effort to improve aerodynamics, he decided to hide the headlights. This bit of streamlining got him the extra couple of MPH. I don’t think the story is true, but it’s fun. I think the headlights are hidden because that’s just one more cool feature! The headlights were modified units from Stinson aircraft, probably because E. L. Cord owned a majority of Stinson stock.

The engine was a V8 Lycoming with 125 horsepower. Lycoming was (and still is) a major engine manufacturer for aircraft. They supplied engines for many makes of automobiles, but during the ’30’s many car companies either went out of business or switched to Continental engines.  By 1937 only three companies used Lycoming: Duesenberg, Auburn and Cord.  (E. L Cord owned all three of these.) When the three went out of business Lycoming got out of the auto engine business, and has since focused on aircraft.

Buehrig’s desire to rid the car of a vertical grill let to this wrap-around horizontal louver design, which prompted the nickname the “Coffin Nosed Cord.”

On the far right you can see a little crank handle… that was used to open the right headlight. There’s a matching crank on the left. You can also see the little preselect gear shift just to the right of the wheel.

The Cord also featured a concealed lockable fuel filler door and variable-speed windshield wipers (at a time when wipers were often operated by intake vacuum, and so tended to stop when the driver stepped on the gas pedal). 

The hood hinged at the windshield and opened up from the front, unlike most cars of the time that had panels that opened from the sides. The Cord also had a radio, with hidden antenna, as standard.  That wasn’t featured on most cars until about twenty years later.

All these innovations were truly groundbreaking… and a bit too much for enough folks to buy them.  Cord, and their “Sister” companies, Duesenberg and Auburn, went out of business in 1937, so the fabulous 810 and 812 were only produced for two years.

A fun fact is that the Oldsmobile Toronado, introduced in 1966, had a front wheel drive V8, hidden headlights, and a hidden radio antenna.  It was heralded as very innovative and exciting.  As it duplicated in many respects the fascinating “Coffin Nosed Cords” from three decades earlier!