The Auburn Automobile Company grew out of the Eckhart Carriage Company, founded in Auburn, Indiana, in 1874 by Charles Eckhart (1841–1915). Eckhart's sons, Frank and Morris, experimented making automobiles before entering the business in earnest, absorbing two other local carmakers and moving into a larger plant in 1909. The enterprise was modestly successful until materials shortages during World War I forced the plant to close.
In 1919, the Eckhart brothers sold the company to a group of Chicago investors headed by Ralph Austin Bard, who later served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy for President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and as Undersecretary of the Navy for President Roosevelt and President Harry S. Truman. The new owners revived the business, but it proved unprofitable. In 1924 they approached Errett Lobban Cord (1894–1974), a highly successful automobile salesman, with an offer to run the company. Cord countered with an offer to take over completely in what amounted to a leveraged buyout, which the Chicago group accepted. Cord aggressively marketed the company's unsold inventory and completed his buyout before the end of 1925.
But aggressive styling and advanced engineering failed to overcome the fact that Cord's extremely upscale vehicles were too expensive for the Depression-era market, and Cord's stock manipulations would force him to give up control of his automobile holding company, which included the even more expensive Cord and Rolls-Royce-priced high-performance Duesenberg. Under injunction from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to refrain from further violations, Cord sold his shares in his automobile holding company. In 1937, production of all three marques ended.
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