JUST A LOG CABIN; Museum owner builds a private Indiana paradise.(News)

Byline: PHIL BERG

DEAN KRUSE

AUCTION OWNER

Inside Dean Kruse's wallet is a packet of photos half an inch thick of his two adopted sons, one now a teenager and the other in grade school. He's teaching them to drive an MG Midget, a Mini Moke and a Citroen 2CV (the actual Austin Powers movie car), which are parked among hundreds of woodcarvings, models, toys and video screens in one of his home garages.

Kruse's father grew up on a farm in Indiana and often heard the roar of the Auburn Automobile Co.'s test drivers in fabulous Auburns and Cords barreling down the dirt road in front of their home. Test driver Ab Jenkins made sure each car that left the Auburn assembly line lived up to its dash plaque certifying that it reached 100 mph, Kruse's father told his son.

He told stories, too, of Auburn test drivers, who also tested the airplanes that fascinated sales genius Errett Lobban Cord, owner of two airlines until 1932. One day, a test driver named Bill Simmons crashed one of Cord's airplanes into the wheat field next to Kruse's family farm, setting the wheat on fire and destroying the crop. Simmons walked away with just scratches, but Cord had to pay the wheat farmer for the lost crop. Part of E.L. Cord's company was engine maker Lycoming in Pennsylvania, which started by building car engines and today powers more than half of the world's fleet of general-aviation aircraft, helicopters included.

Living just down the road from where Auburn grew into a conglomerate of engines and performance-luxury cars, Dean Kruse heard all of the stuff that wasn't jotted into the official corporate histories of AAC, the legendary maker of Auburns, Cords and Duesenbergs, America's finest automobiles ever.