Duesenberg
Duesenberg Model A
Duesenberg J
Duesenberg SJ
In a country where more people drove cars than anywhere else, and where hundreds of firms were making brave but often unsuccessful innovations, Duesenberg remains a special case and will always be unique. Super-luxurious, super-fast, gigantic, yet highly manoeuvrable, heavy, yet requiring the minimum of effort to steer, these cars created an aura of perfection that defies the years. The few still in existence today are quoted at high prices, as in the 1930s when no Hollywood star was seen without one.
Even thirty years after the disappearance of Duesenbergs from Indianapolis, there are many who maintain that they were the best cars ever produced in America and that there is nothing even today to compare with them, even considering such luxury cars as Cadillacs and Lincoln Continentals.
Born in Lippe, Germany, Fred and August (Augie) Duesenberg emigrated to the U.S.A. with their parents in 1885. The brothers first became interested in cars at the turn of the century. Fred helped a friend in Wisconsin build the Rambler; then he opened a garage in Des Moines, Iowa, determined to produce a car of his own design as soon as he was financially able to de so. One of his customers, a lawyer named Mason, offered him the means to realize his dreams. The car he built was called ‘The Mason Motor Car’. It had a twin-cylinder engine, which horizontal opposed cylinders. Advertised as the toughest and fastest American twin-cylinder car, it sold at $1,250.
The company was later bought by Frederick Maytag, which probably pleased Fred Duesenberg as his thoughts were now elsewhere. The first thing he did was to make a 4-cylinder car, for the production of which the Duesenberg Motor Company was founded in Saint Paul, Minnesota, in 1913.
Car : Duesenberg Model A
Year : 1922
Engine : 8 cylinders in line
Bore and stroke :73?127 mm
Cylinder capacity : 4261 cc
Gears : 3 forward
Brake horse power :88
Maximum speed : 95 mph
Wheelbase : 11 ft 2ins (3.40 m)
Suspension : front and back :semi-elliptic leaf- springs
