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O.R. Fuller was a Los Angeles Auburn-Cord Duesenberg
distributor who had a small custom body building department during the late
1920s and early 1930s. The dealership, located on Wilshire Blvd., was bought
out by Auburn in 1931 and served as the automaker’s Southern California
flagship up until the Indiana automaker folded late in 1937.
The firm is known to have built two custom-bodied Cord
L-29s and at least one Auburn Hearse. Rudy Stoessel and Oscar Haskey worked
at the firm at various times as did Burton K. Chalmers, auto salesman to the
stars. All three later worked at Darrin of Paris and Stoessel and Chambers
joined Paul Erdos, another Darrin employee, in the formation of Coachcraft
when Darrin folded in 1939.
Fuller’s dealership was located across from the
Ambassador Hotel in the Auburn California building which was located at 3443
Wilshire Blvd. Cord erected the structure in 1927-1928 to house the firm’s
West Coast offices and O.R. Fuller, California’s Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg
distributor relocated there once the structure was completed. O.R. Fuller
was also heavily invested in radio, and his two popular Los Angeles
stations, KFAC & KFVD also moved into the Auburn California Building. The
Auburn California Building became the first of many E.L. Cord real estate
investments along Wilshire Blvd.
O.R. Fuller was heavily invested in the stock market
and was forced into bankruptcy in 1931 enabling Cord to buy out his ACD
distributorship and radio station empire for pennies on the dollar. Cord
then gave him a job as president of Auburn-Fuller Inc. a firm founded to run
the Wilshire Blvd. dealership. Fuller’s two-station radio empire was
reorganized as the Los Angeles Broadcasting Co. and Fuller was also made
president of Cord’s Century Pacific Lines, a small commuter airline formed
in 1931 to compete against rail and bus lines in the profitable
California/Arizona corridor.
Century Pacific used a small fleet of E.L. Cord-built
Stinson aircraft and in early 1932, Aviation Corp., (AVCO) the parent
company of American Airways, launched a hostile takeover of both Century
Pacific and Century Airlines by creating a labor dispute with Century’s
pilots. Cord was not amused and spent the next few months secretly
purchasing large chunks of Aviation Corp. stock. At AVCO's fall board
meeting, its directors were unpleasantly surprised to learn that Cord was
now Aviation Corp’s majority stockholder (34%), which effectively gave him
control over Century and American.
Auburn-Fuller went out of business soon after Auburn
filed for bankruptcy in December of 1937, which coincided with the creation
of Darrin of Paris.
© 2004 Mark Theobald - Coachbuilt.com
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