Auburn, Indiana, a town of less than 14,000 residents, has three notable automobile museums. The Auburn Cord Duesenberg Museum and the National Auto and Truck Museum are well known. The Early Ford V-8 Foundation Museum is Auburn’s newest, and it is not as well-known but worthy of a visit. It has a collection of Fords manufactured between 1932 and 1953.
The Early Ford V-8 Foundation was started in 1992 by Jerry Windle to preserve the history of the Ford V-8 (Ford Flathead). The Early Ford V-8 Foundation Museum opened in 2009 in an 8,000 square foot facility. It was expanded to 27,000 square feet which opened in 2019. The Museum building was designed as a replica of the Ford Rotunda designed by Albert Kahn for the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair. The Ford Rotunda was to look like a stack of gears. The Ford exhibit drew 12 million visitors in six months. After the World’s Fair closed, the structure was disassembled and moved to Dearborn, Michigan where it was reconstructed.
Why have a museum about the Ford V-8? It has a unique place in history. It was the first affordable V-8 engine. While the four cylinder Ford Model A was the best-selling car in America, Henry Ford wanted something more powerful.
When Henry Ford decided to build an affordable V-8, he handpicked five engineers in 1929. Instead of working on the new engine at the Ford headquarters, Henry Ford had them work in Thomas Edison’s Fort Myers laboratory, which he had recently relocated to Greenfield Village. The engineers were under strict orders to tell no one about what they were doing. By 1931, the engineers had a design which met Henry Ford’s mandate of a low-cost engine.
While other automobile makers had a V-8, they were separately cast cylinder banks and crankcases. They were expensive to produce and heavy. The Ford V-8 (Ford flathead) was a one-piece block engine which was less expensive to produce and lighter in weight. In 1931, a prototype built at Ford’s Rouge Factory was successfully road tested. The engine was introduced to the public on March 31, 1932, as the Model 18 with a cost of less than $500. The flathead V-8 produced 65 horsepower. Significantly, the ride was also smoother than with a V-4 engine. Ford also introduced a four-cylinder engine car, the Model B, in 1932. The Ford Model A equipped with a V-8 engine was so popular that the company stopped selling the V-4 engine by the 1935 model year. Soon, Ford was producing 3,000 V-8 engines daily and over the life of the engine, produced more than 25 million.
Within a year, the Ford V-8 was setting speed records including 109 mph at the 1934 Indianapolis 500. A Ford V-8 engine won the 1933 Elgin National Road race and by 1936, a modified V-8 engine won the first Daytona Beach stock car race. Ab Jenkins drove a modified Ford across the Bonneville Salt Flats at an average speed of 134 mph over a 24-hour period in 1933. The engines were cheap to purchase and became popular with street racers in California. Soon, street racing was causing problems. Wally Parks, Hot Rod Magazine editor, organized the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) to run competitions on drag strips.
One of the owners of a Ford Flathead was President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He had a Phaeton which was equipped with hand controls so that he could drive it.
The Museum includes a replica of the 1936 Floyd Motors dealership including every model offered by Ford in 1936. Probably the most unique car was the stainless steel Ford which was a collaboration between Ford and Allegheny Steel.
The Museum also has one of the 1935 Ford Model 48 Phaeton convertible that was the pace car for the Indianapolis 500. It was driven by Harry Mack accompanied by the honorary referee Amelia Earhart. It was one of the most expensive Ford models produced that year.