1932 Duesenberg Model J Rollston Torpedo Berline

It is a testament to the enduring stature of the Duesenberg Model J that anything great or grand is called a “Duesy” today. While its designers, Frederick and August (Augie) Duesenberg, are best remembered for the immortal J, they earned their reputations building racecars. As a result, competition technology naturally found its way into all of the high-performance automobiles they built for the road.

Like many in the automobile business, the Duesenberg brothers started with bicycles. Fred, a bicycle racer, worked for Thomas Jeffery, the maker of Rambler bikes in Wisconsin. Returning home to Iowa, Fred opened a garage with Augie and designed a two-cylinder automobile. A local attorney named Mason was impressed and put up money for its manufacture. The Mason Motor Car Company of Des Moines, and later Waterloo, built cars until 1914, but the Duesenbergs sold control of the firm to washing machine manufacturer F.L. Maytag in 1909 in order to focus their efforts on racing cars.
The Duesenbergs’ skill and creativity trickled down to other early American automakers. Their four-cylinder walking-beam engine, produced by Rochester, powered half a dozen marques. Eddie Rickenbacker, Rex Mays, Peter DePaolo, Tommy Milton, Albert Guyot, Ralph DePalma, Fred Frame, Deacon Litz, Joe Russo, Stubby Stubblefield, Jimmy Murphy, Ralph Mulford and Ab Jenkins all drove their racing cars. Duesenbergs, seventy in all, competed in fifteen consecutive

Indianapolis 500s starting in 1913. Thirty-two of them finished in the top ten.
The brothers also became the masters of reliability and supercharging. Because engines were Fred’s specialty, they were also beautiful and performed with the best from Miller, Peugeot and Ballot. In 1921, Jimmy Murphy’s Duesenberg won the French Grand Prix at Le Mans, the first car with hydraulic brakes to start in a Grand Prix race. Duesenberg reprised this performance at Indianapolis in 1922, where eight of the top 10 cars were Duesenberg-powered.

Late in World War I, Duesenberg Motors tooled up to build the Bugatti U-16 aero engine. Then the company turned its attention to the Duesenberg Model A, a 183-cubic inch single overhead-cam inline eight. It would be built by a new corporation called Duesenberg Automobiles and Motors, which soon moved from Elizabeth, New Jersey to Indianapolis. After the Model A’s design was complete, Fred and Augie began development of a 122-cubic inch supercharged straight eight for the championship series and Indianapolis.

Fred Duesenberg was an intuitive and creative designer, to whom new ideas came easily. In a quarter century, he and Augie conceived and built more different, distinctive automobiles and engines – even a racing two-stroke for Indianapolis – than any other contemporary designers.

Duesenberg Automobiles and Motors was plucked from the post-World War I recession by E.L. Cord. Cord, who had also saved Auburn, was searching for a prestige line to add to his growing business empire. In 1926, looking for the means to build a more prestigious car, he bought the struggling but very inventive Duesenberg company. Added to Cord’s growing industrial empire, which also included Lycoming engines and the Limousine Body Company, Duesenberg provided a luxury nameplate with advanced engineering. The Model A became, in a sense, the wealthy sportsman’s Pierce-Arrow. For the price of a Pierce Model 36 with T-head six and mechanical brakes, one could get a sophisticated overhead-cam eight and four-wheel hydraulic brakes in a more upscale Duesenberg.

The Model J was superlative in all respects. The 420-cubic inch, dual overhead-camshaft straight eight had four valves per cylinder and made 265 horsepower. The finest materials were used throughout, and fit and finish were to precision standards. Each chassis was also driven 100 miles at high speed at Indianapolis without bodywork. The world’s finest coachbuilders then clothed the chassis.

The Model J was introduced at the New York Auto Salon on December 1, 1928, and it generated countless headlines. Duesenberg ordered sufficient components to build 500 Model Js, while continuing development to ensure its perfection. The first delivery came in May 1929, barely five months before Black Tuesday. The effect of the Duesenberg J on America cannot be overstated. Even in the depths of the Depression, this paragon of power was a portent of prosperity. Duesenberg’s advertising became a benchmark, featuring the wealthy and privileged in opulent surroundings with only a single line of copy: “He drives a Duesenberg” or “She drives a Duesenberg.
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