Auburn Replica 1936 images

Real 1936 Auburn Speedster Boattails stopped rolling off the line decades before this replica was built in 1978, making it a resurrection rather than a survivor. Underneath that Art Deco bodywork sits a Ford 351 Windsor V8, part of a replica boom that started with the 1963 Excalibur and let 1970s buyers relive pre-war glamour without pre-war reliability headaches. These cars even found Hollywood fame, starring in 1990’s Dick Tracy.

Auburn 1936 351 CID Windsor V8 3 Speed Automatic –built 1978

MCF thanks Gateway Classic Cars for the images provided here.

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Nobody was building real 1936 Auburn Speedster Boattails by the late 1970s — the company folded decades earlier — so when a car like this one shows up wearing that unmistakable pointed tail and full-length fenders, it’s not a survivor, it’s a resurrection. Underneath that Art Deco bodywork sits a Ford 351 Windsor V8 and a 3-speed automatic, a combination no Auburn engineer from the 1930s ever would have recognized but plenty of hot rodders in the late ’70s absolutely would have approved of. Built in 1978, this replica is part of a whole cottage industry that sprang up to bring pre-war glamour back to American roads without the pre-war reliability problems. So how did an entire genre of these cars come to exist in the first place?

The Replica Boom Nobody Saw Coming

The replica movement that produced cars like this one traces back to 1963, when the Excalibur — styled after the Mercedes-Benz SSK — kicked off a wave of small manufacturers building fiberglass-bodied tributes to pre-war classics on modern American chassis and drivetrains. Auburn and Cord replicas followed close behind, giving buyers who couldn’t afford, or couldn’t find, an original 852 Speedster Boattail a way to get that same swoopy, fendered silhouette without hunting down a 40-plus-year-old straight-eight.

Why a Windsor V8 Makes More Sense Than It Sounds

Dropping a Ford 351 Windsor into an Auburn-styled body might sound like sacrilege to a purist, but it’s exactly what made these replicas usable, drivable cars instead of museum pieces. Original Auburn 852s ran a supercharged Lycoming straight-eight that’s nearly impossible to service today; a 351 Windsor paired with a 3-speed automatic gave builders parts-store reliability and real power, all wrapped in bodywork that still turns heads at every stoplight the way the original did back in 1935.

A Genuine Piece of Hollywood History

These replicas earned a level of fame the originals never quite matched — an Auburn Speedster replica played the hero car in 1990’s Dick Tracy alongside Warren Beatty and Madonna, and similar replicas turned up on Remington Steele throughout the 1980s. That kind of screen time cemented the boattail Speedster silhouette in pop culture even as most Americans had no idea the real 852 had gone out of production decades before Dick Tracy ever hit theaters.

The Original Auburn That Started It All

The car this replica pays tribute to, Auburn’s 851 and later 852 Speedster, was designed by Gordon Buehrig and first appeared for the 1935 model year, built around a boattail rear deck and full-length fenders that made it one of the most visually striking American cars of the entire Art Deco era. Auburn built the Speedster in relatively small numbers even when new, which is exactly why finding an original today is a multi-million-dollar proposition rather than something even a serious collector can casually shop for.

A Straight-Eight Built to Prove a Point

Every genuine Speedster left the factory with a supercharged Lycoming straight-eight engine, and Auburn famously had endurance driver Ab Jenkins set speed records with one at the Bonneville Salt Flats, backing up the boastful “tested at over 100 mph” plate that came mounted on the dash of every original car. That kind of factory-verified performance claim was almost unheard of in mid-1930s America, and it’s part of what turned the Speedster into a legend that outlived the company that built it.

How the Original Company Collapsed

The Auburn Automobile Company didn’t survive the Great Depression, ceasing production entirely in 1937 after sales collapsed alongside the broader luxury car market of the era. That’s a common story among America’s most ambitious independent automakers of the period — building a genuinely brilliant car wasn’t enough to survive an economic collapse that gutted demand for expensive, low-volume luxury goods almost overnight.

The Cord and Duesenberg Connection

Auburn wasn’t operating alone — it was part of a corporate empire built by businessman E.L. Cord, who also controlled the Cord and Duesenberg brands under the same ownership umbrella. All three names collapsed together by the end of the 1930s, taking with them some of the most innovative American automotive engineering of the era, including Cord’s front-wheel-drive 810/812 and Duesenberg’s legendary Model J, both of which share the same boattail-and-chrome design language that makes replicas like this Auburn instantly recognizable today.

A Modern Industry Built on Fiberglass and Nostalgia

The replica industry that grew up around cars like the Auburn Speedster became a genuine niche manufacturing sector by the 1970s and ’80s, with companies building fiberglass-bodied tributes on modern chassis for buyers who wanted the pre-war look without pre-war reliability, parts availability, or price tags reaching into seven figures. That industry never fully went away either — specialty builders continue producing Auburn, Cord, and similar pre-war-styled replicas for enthusiasts today, decades after the original companies disappeared.

What Separates a Replica From the Real Thing

The value gap between a genuine pre-war Auburn and a fiberglass-bodied replica like this one is enormous, often by a factor of a hundred or more, and serious collectors are always careful to draw a clear line between the two categories rather than let a replica get passed off as anything close to an original. That distinction doesn’t make cars like this one less interesting, though — it just means their appeal is honestly about the driving experience and the styling statement, not an investment case built on scarcity of the genuine article. Buyers shopping this segment of the market today are typically drawn less by any hope of appreciation and more by the simple fact that a well-built replica delivers the exact same head-turning presence at a car show as the genuine article, for a fraction of the risk and expense of owning an irreplaceable pre-war original.

A Design Language That Still Shows Up Today

The boattail rear deck that defines this car’s silhouette didn’t disappear with Auburn in 1937 — designers kept returning to that same swept, pointed-tail shape for decades afterward, most famously on the Buick Riviera’s boattail generation in the early 1970s. That kind of staying power is rare for a styling cue tied to one specific low-volume prewar car, and it’s part of why replicas built around the original Auburn shape still read as instantly glamorous to people who have never heard of the Auburn Automobile Company at all.

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