'37 Cord

Cars have connected John L. Baeke to his dad, John O. Baeke, like an umbilical cord. Their shared passion began with Pinewood Derby cars, but it blossomed in 1965 when his dad brought home a 1937 Cord from Santa Ana, Calif., where it had been used as a chicken coop.

 Why was Baeke so passionate about finding a Cord? “He was a Depression-era baby and he graduated from high school in 1937,” his son said. “And his folks were so poor that his graduation present was permission to hitchhike from Clay Center, Kan., to Lincoln, Neb., to visit his uncle.”

 It was in Lincoln that the elder Baeke first glimpsed a Cord when one nearly ran him down. Baeke was walking downtown when a car charged out of a garage and across the sidewalk. Baeke had to hit the ground to keep from getting run down. As he was lying in a daze, he looked back to see what almost killed him. He didn’t recognize the car, but he remembered chrome pipes. 

 The image of those chrome pipes surfaced again in the late 1950s. John O. Baeke saw a story about Cords and he recognized the chrome pipes. That triggered a flood of memories and he began searching for a Cord. That’s when he learned of one in California, and he flew to Santa Ana to check it out. He bought it on the spot, and it was no longer going to be a home for chickens. To be sure no one swiped the supercharger, he removed it and carried it home in his lap on the plane.

 Baeke had the car trucked to Kansas City. His son, then age 8, remembers going to the freight terminal to pick up the car. “That was better than Christmas,” he said.

 Young Baeke didn’t know anything about a Cord, but “it was a car, it had four wheels, and I was going to get to work on it with my dad,” he said.

 Once the car was back in Kansas City, Baeke and Paul Bryant, a Prairie Village Cord enthusiast and historian, tucked the Cord into a garage and began dismantling it. Rick Hulett performed a restoration that looks amazingly fresh today.  

 Baeke’s Cord was awarded the Gordon Buehrig Award at the annual Auburn Cord Duesenberg Festival in Auburn, Ind.

 John O. Baeke died in 2005, but his love for cars, and his bond with his son, is still very much alive in his ‘37 Cord 812 Beverly.