CarBrandLogos archive · Duesenberg · 1928

DuesenbergModel J

The most expensive American car of its age, sold as a bare chassis to the very rich.

Photo: Rex Gray · CC BY 2.0

The story

A defining chapter in Duesenberg history.

Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the Duesenberg Model J, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.

1932 Duesenberg J Bohman & Schwartz Convertible Coupe

Origins

E. L. Cord's instruction was blunt: build the finest car in the world, and do not worry about what it costs. Fred Duesenberg delivered in 1928. The Model J's engine was a 420 cubic inch straight-eight with twin overhead camshafts and four valves per cylinder — a specification that would have looked advanced on a racing car and was close to unheard of in a road car — built for Duesenberg by Lycoming, another Cord company. A centrifugally supercharged version, badged SJ, followed for buyers who wanted more.

1932 Duesenberg J Bohman & Schwartz Convertible Coupe · Craig Howell from San Carlos, CA, USA · CC BY 2.0

1929 Duesenberg J Murphy Dual Cowl Phaeton

Design and engineering

You could not buy a finished Model J. Duesenberg sold a chassis with the engine, running gear and instruments, and the customer commissioned a body from a coachbuilder: Murphy, Rollston, LeBaron, Bohman & Schwartz and others in America, or the European houses. Gordon Buehrig, working in-house, designed some of the best-known shapes. The result is that no two are quite alike, and that the interesting question about any surviving car is whose body it wears.

1929 Duesenberg J Murphy Dual Cowl Phaeton · Craig Howell from San Carlos, CA, USA · CC BY 2.0

1929 Duesenberg J Murphy Convertible Coupe

In production

The price put it beyond almost everyone. Its buyers were film stars, industrialists and royalty, and the marque entered American slang — the word for something extraordinary was a doozy. It was also genuinely fast; a supercharged Model J would embarrass most European sports cars of the period while carrying a formal body.

1929 Duesenberg J Murphy Convertible Coupe · Craig Howell from San Carlos, CA, USA · CC BY 2.0

Legacy

The car's problem was its timing. It launched in 1928 and spent the whole of its life in the Depression, which removed most of its potential customers and eventually the Cord empire itself. Production limped through to 1937, by which point 481 chassis had been built in Indianapolis, of which 36 were supercharged SJs. Fred Duesenberg died in 1932 after a crash in an SJ. What survives is a reputation out of all proportion to the numbers. Model Js dominate the top rank of American collector cars, and the marque remains the reference for the idea that the United States, briefly, built the most ambitious luxury cars in the world.

At a glance