The Auburn 851 Speedster Came With a Plaque Guaranteeing 100 MPH — Auburn Was Gone Two Years Later

The Auburn 851 Speedster came with a plaque promising 100 MPH — but just two years later, the company that built it was gone. In 1935, Auburn took one of the boldest bets in American automotive history. A supercharged Auburn Speedster was driven by legendary record driver Ab Jenkins for twelve straight hours on Utah's salt flats, averaging more than 100 miles per hour. Auburn turned that remarkable achievement into a marketing weapon, placing signed speed plaques on its production Speedsters. But behind the beautiful boattail body, chrome exhaust pipes, supercharged straight-eight engine, and incredible performance was a company already fighting for survival. Designed by the young Gordon Buehrig, the Auburn 851 Speedster became one of the most recognizable American cars of the 1930s. It was fast, beautifully engineered, and extraordinarily expensive to build. Auburn reportedly lost money on every car it produced. And then the company disappeared. This is the story of the Auburn 851 and 852 Speedster, Ab Jenkins' incredible salt-flat record, Gordon Buehrig's legendary design, the famous 100 MPH dashboard plaques, Errett Lobban Cord, the Cord Corporation, and the final collapse of Auburn in the middle of the Great Depression. The strange part is that the car survived. Today, surviving Auburn Speedsters are highly prized by collectors and can sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Some still carry the original plaques that helped turn one driver's achievement into one of the most unusual marketing claims in automotive history. The car was real. The speed was real. But the company behind it couldn't survive. If you enjoy forgotten automotive history, classic American cars, lost automakers, vintage automobiles, Depression-era America, and stories about incredible machines that disappeared almost overnight, this is the kind of history you'll want to explore. Subscribe for more forgotten stories from the world of American industry, classic cars, engineering, and the machines that changed history. #AuburnSpeedster #ClassicCars #AutomotiveHistory #AmericanCars #Auburn851 #AbJenkins #GordonBuehrig #VintageCars #CarHistory #ForgottenHistory