Driving a car should be one of life's simple pleasures.

For those of us who live in the United States, driving is pretty much an inescapable fact of life. Cars are such an important part of the American culture.

Auburn, Indiana was once a center of a thriving automobile industry. The Auburn Automobile Company produced three of the most beautiful cars ever designed, the Auburn, the Cord, and the Duesenberg. Many of these fine automobiles still survive and return each year for the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Festival. The festival is held on Labor Day weekend. Although this years' festival has come and gone, you may still enjoy some of the pictures of this internationally famous reunion of classic cars.

The Auburn Boattail Speedsters were a signature design of Al Leamy in the earlier days of the Auburn Automobile Company. Gordon Buehrig, designer of the revolutionary Cord 810, added his own design interpretations to the Auburn Boattail Speedster after Leamy left the company in 1934.

To this day, Northeastern Indiana roads are still relatively uncongested. There are many opportunities to experience the pleasure of driving an open top automobile on a country road around Auburn. Unless you spend $200,000 for an original you can only imagine what it must have been like to drive a brand new Auburn Boattail Speedster when it rolled off the factory floor.

Test driving was done on the country roads surrounding Auburn, Indiana during the 1930's. There are local stories that the Indiana State Police simply gave up trying to ticket the test drivers, because there was no way the police cars could keep up with the Auburns! I bet the test drivers enjoyed their jobs!