Duesenberg built America's most powerful car, then vanished in the Depression
In 1929 a Duesenberg Model J put out 265 horsepower, more than any other car of its day, and reached 116 mph. Buyers got only a chassis and engine and hired coachbuilders for the body. Eight years later the company was gone, and in 2018 one surviving example fetched $22 million.
Brothers Fred and August Duesenberg started out designing engines after Fred got into bicycle racing. They built aircraft engines during the First World War and in 1920 founded their car company in Indianapolis. Its first product, the Model A, was the first car mass-produced with a straight-eight engine and the first passenger car offered with hydraulic brakes on all four wheels. Production was a struggle, though: only about 650 were sold across six years.
Racing brought glory. Jimmy Murphy won the 1921 French Grand Prix in a Duesenberg, the first American car to take a Grand Prix, and the marque won the Indianapolis 500 in 1922, 1924, 1925 and 1927. In 1922, eight of the first ten finishers drove Duesenbergs.
After the business slid into receivership, Errett Lobban Cord bought it in 1926 and asked for a car to outclass every rival. The Model J's seven-litre engine, built by Cord's Lycoming company, used twin overhead camshafts and four valves per cylinder. A supercharged SJ, introduced in 1932, was reported to reach 104 mph in second gear, and only 36 were made. Two special SSJs were built in 1935 for Gary Cooper and Clark Gable; it was Cooper's that sold at auction for $22 million, then a record for an American car. Historian Donald Davidson likened the marque to an American Rolls-Royce.
The end came in 1937, when Cord sold and dissolved the firm. It was the only carmaker to go bankrupt in the Depression without government rescue, even though it was the largest employer in Indianapolis. Revival attempts followed for decades; one in Wisconsin handbuilt 67 replicas called the Duesenberg II before closing in 2001.
Source: Duesenberg
