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Every July 24, the collector car world pauses to mark National Amelia Earhart Day, and few machines carry her story further than the 1937 Cord 812 Phaeton Convertible she once called her own. Today the car anchors The JBS Collection, the Elkhart, Indiana assemblage built by collector Jack Boyd Smith Jr., and its ongoing travels across the country's top museums and concours fields keep Earhart's pioneering spirit firmly in the public eye.
Earhart bought the Cord straight off the production line in 1936, finished in a soft Palm Beach Tan she wore into one of the most reproduced photographs of her career, taken alongside her Lockheed 10-E Electra just months before she vanished attempting to circle the globe in 1937. After her disappearance, her husband, George Palmer Putnam, sold the convertible, and over the following decades it changed hands repeatedly before eventually being broken down for spare parts.
The scattered pieces were eventually tracked down and reassembled by Texas enthusiast Ray Foster, who sold the project to Smith Jr. in 2018. Smith Jr. then turned to Travis LaVine and LaVine Restorations, Inc. in Nappanee, Indiana, to return the Cord to its exact factory appearance, a project finished just in time for a 2021 debut at the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance, where it took second in class. Motorious covered that milestone restoration when the Cord first returned to the show circuit, and the car has only added to its trophy case since, including Best in Show honors at the 2021 Auburn Cord Duesenberg Festival.
In 2023, the Hagerty Drivers Foundation inducted the Cord into the National Historic Vehicle Register, making it just the 33rd vehicle to earn that distinction through the Library of Congress-affiliated program. The honor sent the Cord on tour, with stops under glass on the National Mall, beneath the rotunda of London's Royal Automobile Club in 2024, and through a six-month exhibit at the Henry Ford Museum that wrapped in May 2025. Most recently, the Cord appeared in the Studebaker National Museum's Five Driven Women exhibit through July 19, and it is set to join a new National Historic Vehicle Register display at the Savoy Automobile Museum in Cartersville, Georgia, beginning August 4.
The restoration and its aftermath are chronicled in the Season One finale of The Journey, the documentary series in which Smith Jr. and LaVine discuss the cars that pass through their shop. As Smith Jr. put it, "Sometimes history arrives on four wheels" – a line that captures why the Cord keeps drawing crowds nearly nine decades after Earhart's disappearance.
The Earhart car itself will likely never trade hands, but its fame reflects a broader appetite for Full Classic-era Cords. According to Hagerty's valuation tools, a 1937 Cord 812 Supercharged Phaeton convertible in #3 (Good) condition is valued at roughly $244,000, while a non-supercharged 812 convertible in the same condition checks in near $132,000. Recent public sales tracked by Hagerty include a 1937 Cord 812 that brought $204,500 at auction this July, underscoring how steadily these Gordon Buehrig-designed convertibles have held their value. For collectors curious how the related 1936 Cord 810 compares, Hagerty's data shows recent sales ranging from roughly $55,000 to $124,000 depending on condition and body style.
Whether on a concours lawn or under museum glass, Earhart's Cord has become a rolling extension of her legacy. Motorious readers can find more on how the car's backstory came together in our earlier coverage of Earhart's 1936 Cord 810 and the model's broader significance in American automotive design, and it's worth watching for the Cord's next public appearance when it joins the Savoy Automobile Museum's National Historic Vehicle Register exhibit next month.
