Like most everything else about the sensational Cord 810/812, its V8 engine was an original design. Let’s delve into some of its secrets. .

The Auburn Automobile Company was nearly out of business by late 1935, but that didn’t stop the automaker from producing one of the most striking cars in automotive history, the Cord 810. Among the many distinctive features was a novel-looking L-head V8 under the hood. Its appearance was all the more unusual for the fact that it was installed in the chassis backward—in order to suit the front-wheel drive layout.

In 1933, the Auburn Automobile Co. had commissioned a new V8 from Lycoming, a sister company to Auburn in E.L. Cord’s automotive empire and supplier of engines to Auburn, Cord, and Duesenberg. Designed under the direction of chief engineer Forrest S. “Bill” Baster and August “Rick” Rickenbach, head of the experimental department, the new V8 shared some features with Lycoming’s Auburn V12 of 1932-34. (See our feature here.) In its original form, reportedly intended for the never-produced Baby Duesenberg. the new V8 was designated the FA. In the adaptation to the front-wheel drive Cord 810, turned around backward, the engine became the FB.

Like the Auburn V12, the 90-degree Cord V8 used a horizontal valvetrain layout, with the camshaft high in the block and the valves driven directly by roller finger followers. This allowed a more compact combustion chamber for improved volumetric efficiency, but without the additional complexity of overhead valves. This configuration had a brief vogue in the 1930s—along with the Auburn V12, it was used by Pontiac/Oakland and Oldsmobile Viking at General Motors, on the Packard V12, and by Horch in Germany.

Both the intake and exhaust passages were high in the block, avoiding the overheating issues of the flathead Ford V8.  The counterweighted, cross-plane crankshaft featured a stroke of 3.75 inches, while the RayDay cast-aluminum pistons were fit to 3.5-in bores, yielding a displacement of 288.6 cubic inches. Compression ratio was 6.5:1. Among the changes required for front-wheel drive were accessory drives from both ends of the camshaft—water pump and cooling fan at the front (formerly rear) and generator at the rear.

The cylinder heads were of unusual design, too. The coolant passages vary in size and and the aluminum casting varies in thickness across the head to manage heat dissipation, while the external X bracing controls warpage. Although Lycoming participated in their final development, these heads were designed and patented by Everett G. Fahlman, an engineer at the Permold Company of Pittsburgh, a Lycoming supplier.

While the V8 was designed from the start to accommodate a supercharger, it wasn’t introduced to the public until 1937 as an option on the Cord 812. A centrifugal blower much like those used by Auburn and Duesenberg, it featured components produced by Switzer-Cummins, assembled by Lycoming. (For a closer look at the similar Auburn supercharger, see our feature here.)

On the Cord V8, a 9-in aluminum impeller was driven from the center of the camshaft by a vertical shaft and planetary roller drive at 6.5 times crankshaft speed. Mounted directly on the blower inlet was a Stromberg AA-25 two-barrel carburetor, considerably larger than the 810’s two-barrel. In the photo above, the small tube leading into the air cleaner is an early form of positive crankcase ventilation.

In supercharged form, the FB became the FC V8, and with around 6 psi of boost above atmospheric, for safety’s sake the compression ratio was reduced slightly to 6.2:1. Officially, the engine was rated at 170 hp at 3,500 rpm and 260 lb-ft of torque at 2,200 rpm, compared to 125 hp for the normally aspirated 810. However, production supercharged engines reportedly produced as much as 195 hp on the Lycoming dyno. For reasons unclear, the supercharged Cord was deliberately underrated, but either way, the supercharged Cord was one of the hottest cars on the market in the 1930s. It’s one more aspect of the enduring Cord 810/812 legend.