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Just selling planes was not enough for Errett Cord. He organized Century Air Lines, Inc. and Century Pacific Air Lines Ltd.. equipped them with Stinsons, operated between St. Louis, Chicago and Cleveland and in the West at rates directly in competition with the railroads and well under competing airlines.
Errett Cord is 37. slim, medium height with brown hair and eyes. Except when he puts on his steel spectacles and looks like a young college professor he is undistinguished. He is a voluble talker with small regard for grammar and no qualm about profanity. He pays small attention to the detail of his business but thinks and talks plans and policies incessantly. He and his whole company believe in using the telephone long & often. The company's bill sometimes runs between $15,000 and $20.000 a month. Mr. Cord's right-hand man is tall, blond Lucius B. Manning, 37, Yale graduate (1913) and onetime football player, a grain broker until he organized his own investment firm in 1926 and got acquainted with Errett Cord. Now he is vice president of Cord Corp., president of Auburn Aircraft & Airliner Corp.
Errett Cord has been married twice, has three children. Two sons, 16 and 14, are by his first wife who died in 1930. Nine weeks ago his second wife bore a daughter. The Cords spend much time in California where, at Beverly Hills, they are building a spacious new house, and when in Chicago they live in a penthouse. At one time they had twelve automobiles. Now Errett Cord has cut down to a Duesenburg (two years old), a Cord and two Auburns. He hates society, does not go on weekend parties often because it is too hard to get back to work Monday. He believes in training for his job like an athlete, does it by eating little, seldom drinking. His men are expected to do the same. Auburn is famed for its low salaries, but Errett Cord often makes up for that personally. He has been known to give individual presents of $10,000 each, compensating for low pay without raising the cost of his cars to the public.
ΒΆ Stock cars are equipped with so many accessories it seems incredible that at the Show a whole floor was devoted to specialties. It would take a car a block long to carry everything that was offered to refine the pleasure of motoring. There were windproof matches, cigaret lighters, electric clocks, radio outlets, pneumatic foot rests, fancy metal tire covers, heated windshield wipers, sunvisors. There was an ejector spring that opens the door at a touch on the handle. More costly was a shock absorber system operated from the dash which lets the driver adjust his car to the roughness of the road (called "ride control," featured on Buick, Graham-Paige, Oldsmobile). There was a starting system operated by a button on the dash (featured by Hudson and Rockne). There were custom-made tires at $100 apiece that cannot blow out and are guaranteed for 20,000 mi., carrying only 12 Ib. of air pressure.
Stewart-Warner Corp. exhibited a new brake system, as yet not in use on any but test cars. The principle is to use the momentum of the car to check the speed. On the Stewart-Warner model this operates mechanically with a clutch attached to the brake pedal. Frederick I. Libby, young automotive engineer of Bronxville, N. Y. is working on a similar brake operated by hydraulic pressure.