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Most cars make you choose a gear and then act on it. This 1937 Cord 812 Sportsman Convertible Coupe, currently live on Bring a Trailer, lets you pick the next gear first and apply it later. It does that with a vacuum-operated pre-selector transaxle and a Bendix "electric hand" selector, a piece of hardware that made the Cord feel like the future in 1937 and helped make it a headache to own.
The auction is scheduled to end Thursday, October 22 at 1:30 p.m. Eastern, according to the listing, and was sitting at $52,000 when we checked on Monday morning. The dealer seller, Significant Cars of Indianapolis, shows 300 miles on the odometer and an Indiana title.
How the "Electric Hand" Worked
The Cord's engine sits behind the front axle, with the four-speed transaxle mounted ahead of it. A conventional shift linkage would have been a long, awkward run through a car already packed with front-drive hardware. Cord's answer was to move the shifting job to electricity and vacuum instead of rods and levers.
According to the listing, a small selector on the steering column lets the driver choose the next gear. The gear is not engaged until the clutch pedal is pressed, which completes an electrical circuit and fires vacuum cylinders on the transaxle. In other words, you decide what you want, then the car carries it out when you dip the clutch. Drivers who liked the idea of a shifter that worked like a light switch got exactly that. Drivers who disliked the idea of waiting on a vacuum system got a lesson in patience.
Headlights on Hand Cranks
The same car also carries Gordon Buehrig's other showpiece. The Cord's headlights hide inside the front fenders and are raised by dash-mounted hand cranks, long before pop-up lamps became a sports-car cliché. The listing describes the system as mechanically operated. Together with the "coffin-nose" grille, rear-hinged hood, concealed door hinges and split windshield, it is a big part of why the 810 and 812 still look like nothing else from the 1930s. For more on the model's reputation, see our look at a rare 1936 Cord 810 Phaeton headed to Mecum and the restored 1937 Cord 812 Phaeton once owned by Amelia Earhart.
Why Cord Built It, and Why It Faded
Front-wheel drive, a low body with no running boards, and a transmission that shifted by wire were all meant to say that Cord was not building a conventional luxury car. The 812 arrived for 1937 as the last year of the line, and the 810 and 812 were the final Cords before the Auburn Automobile Company stopped building the marque. The pre-selector gearbox did not catch on elsewhere in American production. Simpler, more reliable automatics arrived within a few years, and Cord's short run left few cars and even fewer parts-bin solutions for the next generation to copy.
What This One Brings
This example is a black Sportsman, the two-seat, two-window convertible, with a black leather bench seat, wide whitewalls, a body-color metal tonneau panel that covers the folded top, and a 150-mph speedometer. The listing says power comes from a supercharged 288.6-cubic-inch Lycoming V8 with a single downdraft carburetor, external exhaust pipes, and a Schwitzer-Cummins centrifugal blower. It reportedly spent years in the hands of USAC driver and stuntman Bob Harkey and was bought by a Virginia collector in 2005 before the dealer acquired it about a month ago. A shifting service is said to have been performed in 2026.
A Caution Before You Bid
Bidders have raised questions in the comments. One commenter pointed out that the chassis number on the data plate does not match the number a reference book lists for a convertible coupe, and that the plate appears to be a reproduction. The seller replied that most restored Cords carry reproduction tags, believes the record to be an error, and said the car has not been certified by the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Club. The seller also stated plainly that the car is not being represented as one of the factory-supercharged cars. If you are chasing a factory-supercharged 812, read that exchange in full on the original Bring a Trailer listing and ask your own questions before you bid.
That caveat aside, this is the kind of car that makes a gearbox the main event. If you have ever wanted to try shifting with an "electric hand," or you simply want a Buehrig coffin-nose with working crank-up headlights, the listing is live here. For more pre-war Cords and Auburns, our roundup of the coolest pre-war cars for sale on Motorious is a good place to keep browsing.
