Category Archives: Travel

Work! Long (excellent) days! Holidays! Siblings! Christmas party tomorrow! CAF work tonight! Sleep (please, dear god, let there be some time in there for sleep!)

How would you like a nice picture of a very interesting and unusual grove of trees in Shanghai?

If you really love cars and you also love swing dancing, go visit the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Automobile Museum in Auburn, Indiana in August to attend the “Gatsby Gala.” Not only will you get to see all of these gorgeous vehicles and history, but the music and party is pretty good as well. Dress appropriately!

Here are more photos, primarily from the “Gallery Of Classics.” (Earlier pictures are here, here, here, here, and here.)

1911 Auburn

Auburn, year unknown

The chassis for one of these early cars, with front wheel drive…

…and a honkin’ big engine. That’s an in-line, eight-cylinder monster, a “straight eight.”

Duesenberg also tried to get into the aircraft engine field in 1918 (only fifteen years after the Wright Brothers flew!) with this V-16 engine. It never took off, too heavy for the flimsy aircraft of the day.

1909 McIntyre

1910 Zimmerman

Another Zimmerman, year unknown

1907 Kiblinger – any wonder they were originally called “horseless carriages?” Can you imagine the traffic jam behind one of these in the #1 lane of the 405 Freeway?

(I’m telling you folks, it’s going to happen with this upheaval in my routine now that I’m working again. Got home, dinner, busy, busy, busy, doing some CAF stuff, crawled into bed at 23:40 and The Long-Suffering Wife said, “What did you write about tonight, dear?” And I said, “Oh, shit! I’ll be back in ten minutes!” Thank goodness I had this already put together, sort of. One of these days!)

Even if you don’t love cars, go visit the Auburn Cord Dusenberg Automobile Museum in Auburn, Indiana anyway. Here are more photos, primarily from the “Gallery Of Classics.” (Earlier pictures are here, here, here, and here.)

Either another Duesenberg, or some sort of sick, inside joke by the guy who got the custom license plates.

1910 Auburn

2003 Indy Show Car

1925 Indy Racer

A 1960’s era Duesenberg sedan? (I wish I had done a better job of documenting what I was taking pictures of.) This may be the concept car designed by Virgil Exner.

Studebaker tried to break back into the US car market in the 1962 with the Avanti. Less than 6,000 were made.

I really had no idea before I saw this museum that Indiana was such a hotbed of automobile innovation and industry before World War II. All we know today is Detroit’s Big Three, but it wasn’t always so.

The museum here has restored examples from a dozen or more early Indiana companies, including Hanes & Apperson.

Waverley. Union. Overland. Plus over two dozen more early Indiana car companies, all lost to history, but pioneers in their day.

An early “Please Do Not Touch The Cars” model, year unknown. (I think it’s actually an early Auburn.)

Look at the way the brass tubing for the horn winds around the open “door” next to the driver. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!

If you love cars, go visit the Auburn Cord Dusenberg Automobile Museum in Auburn, Indiana. Here are more photos from the main gallery, the “Company Showroom,” as well as pictures from the “Gallery Of Classics.” (Earlier pictures are here, here, and here.)

As is obvious and previously stated, the “Company Showroom” is stunning.

I wish I could identify more of these cars, but I was off my game that night, in part due to the circumstances of the evening. I head wasn’t in its proper “photographer” mode. Normally, digital photos costing essentially zero, whenever I’m taking pictures at a museum, the zoo, traveling overseas, or anywhere else where there is information on display describing what I’m taking the picture of, I’ll shoot a quick picture or two of the sign. It’s a fast, cheap, and easy way of being able later to identify where you were, what you were looking at, and whatever information was available there.

Not this night. *sigh*

Someone did however borrow my camera to take another picture of this great 1926 Auburn. If only that grinnin’ fool hadn’t gotten in the way of the beautiful car!

Upstairs is the Gallery of Classics. Also stunning.

The first black car on the right is a 1930 LaSalle

Here are cars that aren’t necessarily Cords, Auburns, or Dusenbergs.

I love this color. And the chrome. And the convertible leather top. And the whitewalls. And the huge engine.

This is a Dusenberg, year unknown.

If you visit Indiana, go visit the Auburn Cord Dusenberg Automobile Museum in Auburn, Indiana. Here are more photos from the main gallery, the “Company Showroom.” (Earlier pictures are here and here.)

1933 Auburn.

Not crazy about the color, but that’s stylin’!

1930 Cord

1927 Dusenberg

Gorgeous lines, I wonder what it got for mileage? I especially like the passenger-side mirror strapped onto the spare tire.

Now that’s a color scheme that I can get behind! Nothing boring about it.

1931 Cord. With a ghostly reflection in the glass of some doofus with a camera.

In Indiana recently we visited the Auburn Cord Dusenberg Automobile Museum in Auburn, Indiana. The first set of pictures were mostly from the Gallery of Special Interest Automobiles. This second set is from the main gallery, the “Company Showroom.”

The gallery itself is architecturally and stylistically stunning, straight out of the finest of the era between the two world wars, when the US auto industry exploded in size.

1930 Auburn

1928 Auburn

1932 Cord

1936 Auburn

1926 Auburn

1936 Auburn

Recently while in Indiana for a family wedding, we had the opportunity to visit the Auburn Cord Dusenberg Automobile Museum in Auburn, Indiana. I had no idea what the venue was or what we were going to find there, just that it was a thing we were doing while in Fort Wayne for the wedding.

It’s an amazing place.

Here is the first batch of photos. A couple of the photos are a touch blurry since it was at night and I didn’t have a tripod or monopod, but none of them are terrible. Also, I didn’t get identification information on most of the cars – sorry, I was caught off guard and didn’t bring my “A” game. But they’re still incredible cars to see.

Most of the cars in this set are from the Gallery of Special Interest Automobiles.

Very busy, very late, no time = POP QUIZ!

Who knows where the big blue bear is? (Hint: United States)