Designed by Gordon Buehrig
Gordon Buehrig was working for General Motors in 1933 when design chief Harley Earl staged a competition to style a futuristic four-door sedan. Buehrig came up with a coffin-nosed sedan with headlights hidden in the pontoon-shaped front fenders and no conventional grille--directly contradicting Earl's belief that the face of a car was its most important aspect. Buehrig finished dead last in the competition. Shortly thereafter, Buehrig went back to work at Duesenberg (where he'd been employed between 1929 and 1933) and used his rejected design as the basis for the Cord 810. Introduced in November 1935, the radical, front-wheel-drive, V-8 810 (called the 812 for 1937) went on to win several design awards.