The earliest Auburn Speedsters had no side windows and no interior door handles — you got in, and getting back out meant reaching outside the car.
Lead trim: Speedster 115 4.8 L side-valve Lycoming eight (115 bhp, 1930) · up to 125 hp
Auburn Speedster1928–1930
- 0spots by members
- Unclaimednobody has spotted one yet
- 0sets it belongs to
Nobody in Burbles has spotted a Auburn Speedster yet. See one on the street, point the app at it, and the first card is yours — with your @handle permanently credited on this page.
FactThe earliest Auburn Speedsters had no side windows and no interior door handles — you got in, and getting back out meant reaching outside the car.
The Auburn Speedster is an American car built by the Auburn Automobile Company (887 built between 1928 and 1936 in three series); the first series, styled by Alan Leamy, began with the 1925 "Eight-In-Line" that in 1926 received an uprated 4.8-liter side-valve 68 bhp Lycoming and became the "8-88", reaching 115 bhp by 1930 (hence Speedster 115). It was a straightforward, stout design with semi-elliptic springs all round, mechanical brakes after experiments with hydraulics, a three-speed unit gearbox and an open two-seat body by Count Alexis de Sakhnoffsky with a boat-tail and vee windscreen. The Speedster 120 with the "big eight" 268 cubic inch 120 hp engine was built in 1928 and 1929 (100 built, perhaps 8 known to survive), and in 1930 the Speedster 125, advertised as a "racing car with comfort of a closed car", had a 125 bhp version of the Lycoming eight with a top speed over 100 mph.
Collectors Spotted in the Auburn Speedster Lineage
No member has published a public street spot of the Auburn Speedster yet — the First · Worldwide stamp is wide open.
Trims & Figures
3 published trims in the catalogue. A blank is a figure not recorded, not zero.
| Trim | Years | Engine | Power | Torque | 0–60 | Drive | Gearbox | MSRP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Speedster 115 4.8 L side-valve Lycoming eight (115 bhp, 1930) | 1930–1930 | 4.8 L Inline-8 | 115 hp | — | — | — | — | — |
| Speedster 120 268 cu in big eight (120 hp, 1928–1929) | 1928–1929 | — | 120 hp | — | — | — | — | — |
| Speedster 125 Lycoming eight (125 bhp, 1930) | 1930–1930 | — | 125 hp | — | — | — | — | — |
Owning one
We don’t estimate running costs for a car like this. What it costs depends on its condition, its specialist and how it is driven, and an average would mislead.
Owners’ builds
Nobody has claimed one yet.
Photographs
Batman's original Batmobile design in the early comics was modeled on this car — the Auburn 851 Speedster.
The Speedster's V12 didn't die with the Depression-era Auburn — its design lived on for decades as the basis of the LaFrance engine that powered fire trucks.
The earliest Auburn Speedsters had no side windows and no interior door handles — you got in, and getting back out meant reaching outside the car.
Rivals
Same body, same money, other badges — tap any card to flip.
In 1974 Alfa built a one-off on this Spider: a Porsche-style solid rear window and lift-out roof panels, fewer than 2,000 made, the only Spider ever with a part-solid roof.
Over 100,000 people voted to name this car "Duetto" — but a chocolate-snack maker had already trademarked the word, and a Milan court ruling forced Alfa to sell it as the Spider 1600 instead.
After nearly 25 years of manual-only Spiders, the final Series 4 cars quietly added something Alfa purists never expected: an optional automatic transmission.
The mid-80s Spider's Quadrifoglio Verde trim went all-in on a single look: blood-red carpets and grey leather with red stitching, and it only ever came in three exterior colors.
This Spider was built not by Alfa but by Pininfarina itself, on a platform shared with General Motors.
The 916 Spider's strongest naturally aspirated engine, the 192 PS 3.0 12V Busso V6, was never offered in its GTV coupe twin.
The Frogeye had no boot lid at all — owners reached the spare wheel by tilting the seats forward into the dark cavity behind, a ritual they likened to potholing.
The Fairlady 2000's SR311 update came with a five-speed manual gearbox in 1967 — a genuinely unusual spec for any production car of that era.