MIKE: You're about ready to
FRANK: I know, Duesenbergs.
MIKE: Auburn parts. [whistle]
[inaudible]
FRANK: It's right in here.
Yep, there they are.
Look at that car.
FRANK: Oh, wow.
When we first pull up, you can tell things are different here.
There's all kinds of classic Auburns and Cords
parked outside the building.
But there's even an airplane here.
I mean, this is going to be one of those picks to remember.
Hello.
DOUG: Come in.
Hey, Doug.
I'm Mike. Nice to meet you.
Hey Mike.
You talked to Dani on the phone.
How are you doing? I'm Frank.
Nice to meet you.
All right.
I'm Doug Pray.
I'm the president of the Auburn Cord Dusenberg Factory.
It's been a family thing since 1960s.
Dani was saying that your father
bought the whole contents of the factory out of Indiana.
He did.
Glenn Pray, my dad, was a schoolteacher
with no money who bought an automobile factory
and moved it to Oklahoma and then started
manufacturing Auburn and Cords.
Yeah, he bought it from Dallas Winslow,
which was a very rich, famous car builder of the day.
Do you know what he paid for it back then?
About $80,000.
And your dad's a teacher.
Right.
So where did he get that kind of cash?
Well, that's exactly what Dallas Winslow asked him.
He said, how are you going to pay for it?
He says, well, I'm going to go home and sell some assets.
And he's thinking to himself, well, I've got a TV set,
and I've got a Cord, you know. - Yeah.
Right.
And then he said, since you're the richest man I've ever met,
he said, I thought I'd borrow the rest from you.
And the guy liked his guts and his tenacity, and he said OK.
So your dad was just fearless, man.
FRANK: Glenn Pray was a classic American success story.
I mean, this is a guy that punched his own ticket,
and he didn't let anyone stand in his way.
Let me show you guys something back here.
We have a secret room in this building.
When I hear the words secret room, I get intrigued.
I'm thinking like spy novels, Cold War,
you know, 007 stuff, but all I'm wondering
is where is he taking us?
This is the secret room.
FRANK: We walk past this plywood door,
and I'm expecting a dungeon.
OK.
This is not what we expected.
DOUG: My dad, Glenn, said, I'm going
to build an ageless automobile.
I'm going to bring back the Cord.
He had a full-sized drawing of what the car was going to look
like on the wall, and he brought his crew in here of eight guys,
and he said, we're going to build
that car around that engine on that table.
As the word got out that he was building this modern day
version of an original Cord, reporters were coming
from all over the country.
That door right there opened, and I'm a little kid in here,
and somebody sneaks his head around the corner,
and behind him was a cameraman with this great big camera.
And dad goes over to the door, and he
says you guys have to wait just like everybody else.
You can't come in, and he slammed the door in his face.
It was Walter Cronkite.
And--
MIKE: [laughter]
FRANK: Oh, wow.
DOUG: My dad told off Walter Cronkite.
MIKE: Your dad slammed the door on Walter Cronkite.
Man, your dad was just constantly going for it.
He was like reinventing himself over and over and over.
Yeah, I know.
Glenn's plan was simple.
All he wanted to do was recreate a second generation
of these cars with modern technology.
Can I sit in this?
Sure, go right ahead.
MIKE: Through the '60s, '70s, and even into the early '80s,
Glenn built limited numbers of the cars that he redesigned.
It's a genuine Glenn Pray 874 Dual Cowl Phaeton.
This is a 1978 version of a re-imagined 1936 Auburn.
This is number 17 of 17 built. It's
got a patent on the design.
Lincoln 460 Big Block--
It's got air conditioning in it.
--and automatic transmission.
Bam.
Why does it have the gauges in the back, here.
To let the passenger know what the RPMs, how
fast you're going or what's--
Well, typically back in the '30s, it would have
been a chauffeur driven car.
OK.
So the little rich lady sitting in the back seat
is backseat driving telling the chauffeur to slow down.
Slow down, your up to 40.
So that's where backseat driving came from.
Oh.
Oh, OK.
I love today.
Hey, thank you so much.
- Thank you, I appreciate it. - Frank.
Thanks for letting us look through your stuff.
- Good luck with everything. - Oh, thank you.
A lot of fun.
Dad would have had a lot of fun dickering back
and forth, telling stories.
He loved to buy and sell.
He loved the art of the deal, and Mike
and Frank are good at that.
[horn honks]
FRANK: See you, Doug.
DOUG: Hey, bye guys. FRANK: Take care.
DOUG: See ya.
Glenn Pray didn't just save a bunch of parts
from the scrap heap.
This is a guy that took one of the great American automobile
companies and moved it forward.
[crickets chirping]