We’re taking a second swing at this story, and we hope to get it right this time. Here’s an excellent film from 1936 featuring some lost designs of Gordon M. Buehrig. 

When we originally featured this video (Video: Clay Modeling the Cord 810, Sept. 24, 2014) we unfortunately included the popular explanation for it as well. As the story went, the film supposedly documents the work of Gordon Buehrig at the Auburn Automobile Co. at around the time he designed the company’s groundbreaking 1936 Cord 810.  There were a couple of problems with this assumption that we overlooked, but fortunately, Mac’s Motor City Garage reader Robert D. Cunningham soon came along and pointed us in the right direction. For that we are much obliged. Rather than try to correct the original story, we thought it best to simply scrap it and start over.

Far more plausibly, this film documents Buehrig’s work at his next employer, the Budd Co., where he landed in October of 1936 as Auburn was folding up. At Budd, manufacturer of automotive bodies, stampings, and wheels, Buehrig set up the company’s first design and modeling studio in Detroit, where the in-house projects included a small economy car known as the Wowser. The vehicle shown here going through various phases of clay and plaster modeling—and a fascinating process it is, as you will see—is indeed the Wowser, we believe. While the Wowser clearly took some styling cues from the Cord, the vehicle was engineered for light weight, low cost, and a minimal number of body stampings.

For fear of antagonizing Budd’s automaker clients, the Wowser was never pitched to a manufacturer, reportedly, and frustrated with the design studio’s lack of progress, Buehrig promptly got himself terminated. “I finally got mad and wrote (Edward) Budd Jr. a letter and told him I thought they were wasting my time and his money, and so that was the end of it,” he would remember years later. “I got fired just like that!”

Toward the end of the film we are shown a stylish truck design, which only makes sense as Budd (unlike Auburn) was a major supplier of truck cabs at the time. Also worth noting: While we never quite get a complete look at his face in this clip, we’re pretty sure the young modeler with the jet-black hair is Vince Gardner. An associate of Buehrig, a talented craftsman, and a designer in his own right, Gardner’s credits include the 1953 Vega sports car he designed and built for Henry Ford II. We’re glad to be able to clear up our earlier error and present, we believe, a more accurate description of the film. It’s a priceless look at the design studio techniques of the era, and we hope you enjoy it.