P.M. BRIEFING : Cord 810 Designer Buehrig Dies

Gordon Buehrig, who revolutionized automotive design with such masterworks as the Duesenberg Model J, the Cord 810 and the Auburn Boattail Speedster, died Monday. He was 85.

The son of a banker in Mason City, Ill., Buehrig dropped out of Bradley University in Peoria to work as a body shop apprentice in Wayne, Mich.

Buehrig, the dean of classic automotive design, crafted cars that tickled the imagination and were unconstrained by the limits of mass marketing.

The Cord 810 was the talk of the 1935 New York Auto Show. Not only was it one of the earliest front-wheel drive cars, it also featured flip-up headlights and allowed drivers to step, rather than climb up, into a car for the first time.

In 1951, the Museum of Modern Art selected the Cord as one of the outstanding automotive designs of all time.