Amelia Earhart didn't own her Cord 812 long before she famously disappeared over the South Pacific in July 1937, during an attempt to fly around the world. Yet, just as her disappearance led to decades' worth of investigations in an attempt to piece together the story of her final flight, so did the dismantling of her Cord lead to decades' worth of sleuthing in an attempt to piece the car back together. Now restored, the Cord has taken numerous honors on the concours circuit, including Best in Show at this weekend's Chattanooga Motorcar Festival.

"It's been a journey, to say the least," Travis LaVine of LaVine Restorations, the shop that restored the Earhart Cord, said.

The first step on that journey was documenting the car. Earhart was famously photographed standing by her Cord and her Lockheed Electra 10E in September 1936, and Earhart's estate included plenty of information about the car. Given that E.L. Cord was heavily involved in the aviation world (and the Cord's hidden headlamps were aviation units), it made sense that Earhart would be drawn to the Cord 810/812. According to LeVine, the Cord was one of the last 200 built in 1936, so it had a mix of components from 1936 and 1937 model years and is technically considered a 1937 Cord 812. It also had a number of rare accessories, including a suicide knob on the steering wheel and a compass, another natural for Earhart.

Following her disappearance, her husband, George Putnam, had her declared dead in 1939 and proceeded to sell off assets from her estate — including the Cord — to help pay for the extensive searches he conducted. Despite the connection to Earhart, the car was unceremoniously parted out. The body, a desirable phaeton convertible painted in Palm Beach Tan and fitted with maroon leather interior, went to California. The engine went to another car. It kept other Cords on the road, LaVine noted, especially at a time when the cars were quickly falling out of favor and mechanics were less than eager to work on the front-wheel-drive pioneers, but it seemed Amelia Earhart's Cord was gone forever.

Not quite. Discover how the Cord was reassembled...